Not apocryphal, but not what you're thinking of -- breakage is essentially an unexercised contract right (like a gift card that is never redeemed), and in strea

Not apocryphal, but not what you're thinking of -- breakage is essentially an unexercised contract right (like a gift card that is never redeemed), and in streaming it refers to the difference between an advance or minimum payment to a label from a streamer and the actual royalties -- like a $1mm advance that only garners $500K worth of royalties from listeners. The labels would often only pay out to artists and songwriters on the actual royalties and keep (or unfairly distribute) breakage, so artists wouldn't share in all the advance fees. This has been cleaned up AFAIK, but it was a pretty stark example of how entertainment accounting is used to play "heads I win, tails you lose" games with the people who actually create.