Black angry, Spotify, the giant of Streaming Musical, has just released “Plow” at the Franco Folies de La Rochelle.
The Francos of Montreal will undoubtedly be the next victim. It's not that Spotify lacks users (550 million, including 220 million premium subscribers) or money ($14.6 billion in revenue), but when you're a giant, you don't let it dictate your behavior him. The French government just had the bad idea of imposing a 1.2% tax on the revenue Spotify generates in France. The tax will raise about $22 million per year. Great for a platform like Spotify.
The Ottawa government also wants to hold to account the digital giants that drove the audiovisual industry, the music industry and newspapers to bankruptcy. This is what the federal government wants to achieve with the new laws on streaming and online news. At the moment only Google has given up, although the promised and indexed $100 million per year is less than we hoped.
At the last minute, our Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland decided to give the poor digital giants a little New Year's gift. She, who had vowed that her Canadian income would be taxed at 3% starting January 1, finally took pity on them. The tax in question is postponed to the Greek calendar!
Fear of retaliation
Was Ms. Freeland afraid of retaliation? Undoubtedly, due to the French government's decision to impose this modest 1.2% tax to support the National Music Center, Spotify will no longer sponsor the Franco Folies and the Printemps de Bourges, a festival that will celebrate this year's 47th anniversary next April. But where does all the money Spotify makes go?
Despite exponential subscriber growth and the layoff of 2,300 employees, Spotify will again be in the red by around $150 million this year. Apparently his creator, Daniel Ek, has eyes bigger than his stomach. The company continues to make acquisitions and launch new products to neutralize competition, but fails to reduce its marketing, administrative and research costs. Ultimately, it is the performers and composers who suffer.
Monsieur Ek claims to compensate artists more generously than any other music platform, but that is false. It pays them about the same as Amazon, less than Deezer and Apple, but much more than YouTube, the meanest giant.
it's incomprehensible
I tried to understand how the major music platforms pay artists, but I couldn't. It's a Kafkaesque complication. Basically let's say that of the $10 in revenue, about 50 cents is paid to the performer and $1 is paid in royalties to the composer, but there are so many variables at play, all determined by algorithms, that we can't trust this average.
To save a little, Spotify artists and composers who don't generate 1,000 pieces per year will no longer receive a cent starting next Monday. In total, the platform will save around $55 million.
Anyway, Happy New Year, dear artists!