Spotify is no stranger to criticism, various infographics have popped up claiming Spotify pays mere fractions on plays – more recently artists including Taylor Swift have gotten fed up, taking down their music from Spotify in protest.
Spotify has finally responded to the allegations in a recent blog post on their website:
Two numbers: Zero and Two Billion. Piracy doesn’t pay artists a penny – nothing, zilch, zero. Spotify has paid more than two billion dollars to labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists. A billion dollars from the time we started Spotify in 2008 to last year and another billion dollars since then
The article goes on to bust rumors and myths regarding what most people think is fair about music payment and what’s actually happening.
The overall message is if Spotify wasn’t there the music would be getting pirated elsewhere, leaving nothing instead of something for artists.
If a song has been listened to 500 thousand times on Spotify, that’s the same as it having been played one time on a U.S. radio station with a moderate sized audience of 500 thousand people. Which would pay the recording artist precisely … nothing at all. But the equivalent of that one play and its 500 thousand listens on Spotify would pay out between three and four thousand dollars.
Read the full article here.