Spotify has just got in touch about the reports of worryingly low payouts for artists on the music streaming service, adding context to the claims that 1 million plays will earn you just $167. We’ve got the full statement here.
The report, originally from Swedish publication expressen.se, claimed that Spotify paid just $167 in royalties for 1 million plays of the track Pokerface, but Spotify’s got in touch with us to add a little bit of background info that puts things in a new light.
In short, Spotify says that the figures only represent the money paid out for one country, for one organisation, and back when the service first launched, before it became the wildly successful service we know and love. The full statement is below:
“Firstly, any payment to STIM would only represent a fraction of the payments rights holders receive and only for music played in one country (in this case Sweden) as we pay not only collecting societies, but also publishers and the record company to play their music.”
“Secondly, the figure (unrepresentative as it is) is from a short period just after our launch last year, way before we’d established ourselves as a music service and built up a large user base. Specific payments are of course confidential, but this is certainly wide of the mark.”
Spotify has grown a huge amount over the last year, and now claims millions of users – what the payout might be now is still under wraps, but here’s hoping there’s a sustainable future for music streaming services online.
Out TBC | £TBC | Spotify
