Spotify says his payouts are improving, but artists still disagree

Spotify on Tuesday released its annual A strong and clear reportDetailed information on payments for royalty of the music streaming service. While Spotify revealed earlier this year that it pay $ 10 billion For the music industry in 2024. The new report offers more in-depth numbers for its payments in an attempt to Dispel Reports That the company does not properly reward artists for its work.

For the first time, an artist who received one in a million Spotify streams generated an average of over $ 10,000 in 2024, which is 10 times what the same streamshare would have generated a decade ago, the report said.

While Spotify utters the amount she has paid to performers and songwriters, many of them require fair compensation from the streaming service. A few weeks ago a number of Grammy -nominated songs Boycotted Songs of the Year of Spotify Grammy Party because of the declining remuneration of the music streaming service. Due to a change introduced by Spotify last year, Billboard has appreciated These writers were lost about $ 150 million in 12 months.

In addition, a New Duetti Report (This Spotify has rejected in a Previous statement to TechCrunch) found that Apple Music is still paying artists twice as much as Spotify. He found that Spotify paid $ 3.0 for 1000 streams, while other platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Music and YouTube paid $ 8.8, $ 6.2 and $ 4.8, respectively, for $ 1,000 in 2024.

After the report was released, Spotify told TechCrunch that “these allegations are ridiculous and unfounded” and that “no streaming service pays a stream.”

Spotify’s new report is trying to reject these reports and concerns. The report describes in detail the payment model of the company to explain how artists and publishers earn revenue on their platform.

“The basic streaming services all calculate the payments in the same way: based on Streamshare (if the artist’s catalog represents 1% of the total flows, this will win 1% of total remuneration),” the company explained in its report. “However, the misconceptions of the” flow rate “remain widespread. Streaming services do not pay based on a fixed flow rate-accurately as the listeners do not pay a song they listen to. “

The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (Umaw) calls on Spotify to compensate for fair artists, especially independent and smaller artists who are struggling to make a living. Congress Rashida Vlob and Congressman Jamaal Bauman presented last year Borrow the salary of the musicians acting In partnership with Umaw, describing a proposal in detail aimed at increasing musicians for musicians to one cent.

“It’s easy to calculate what Spotify pays directly to recording artists: $ 0,” a Umaw spokesman said in a statement to TechCrunch.

“There is no direct payment for the recording of artists from Spotify, as the company claims that the streaming method does not fall in any existing regulation or requirement for direct payments to musicians-unlike other digital platforms such as satellite radio, internet broadcasting or” non-interactive “streaming, all of whom are direct This has to change, obviously. Umaw supports the salary for musicians to close this door and make streaming pay to the musicians who create the content for Spotify and other platforms, “the statement concludes.

Spotify’s report turns out that his payments are improving despite the fears of the industry.

The report reveals that the number of salaries generating artists has tripled from 2017. A decade ago, the best Spotify artist won just over $ 5 million, while more than 200 performers have surpassed this ending stone today.

In the last decade, the 10,000th SPOTIFY artist has seen that their rewards have increased by almost 4 times-from $ 34,000 to $ 131,000, while the 100,000th ranked artist has seen that their generated remunerations have multiplied by more than $ 6,000 in 2014 in 2014.

In addition, the company revealed that nearly $ 1,500 artists generated over $ 1 million rewards from Spotify alone last year. Spotify notes that 80% of these artists did not have a song to reach the Spotify Global Daily Top 50 Chart in 2024, which means that many of them are not household names.

Spotify also said that the performers who generated at least $ 100,000 for rewards record music in over 50 languages ​​in 2024, while the performers who generated at least $ 1 million on Spotify recorded music in 17 different languages.