The world’s leading streaming platform Spotify will change the way it pays artists in 2024 by introducing a minimum number of plays to be eligible for compensation, it announced on Tuesday.
Spotify’s compensation system will evolve to meet three needs: further discourage artificial streaming, better distribute small payments that don’t reach artists, and curb those who try to game the system by focusing on non-musical music Concentrate sounds, explains the company’s website for artists.
By addressing each of these issues, Spotify estimates it can generate approximately $1 billion (CAD$1.37 billion) in additional revenue for emerging and professional artists over the next five years.
At least 1000 listeners to be able to generate a payment
Starting in early 2024, the platform will launch at least 1000 games over 12 months to be able to generate payment.
Spotify explains that the tracks below this threshold currently generate an average of US$0.03 (CAD0.04) per month and are unaffected by rights holders, while they total a sum of US$40 million (54.78 million CAD).
We will simply use these tens of millions of dollars per year to increase payments to eligible securities, the platform says.
In the fight against artificial streaming, particularly created by robots, Spotify announces that it will charge record companies and distributors fees per track if obvious artificial streaming is detected in their content. The amount of this withholding tax was not specified.
Between 1% and 3% of false eavesdropping attacks on the Internet
In early 2023, a first global study on the subject estimated that between 1% and 3% of online listening was incorrect, according to 2021 data from the National Music Center (CNM) in France.
As a third change to its compensation method, Spotify will increase its terms for paying royalties for listening to non-musical sounds (animal sounds, nature sounds, etc.).
Tracks of this type of noise must have a duration of at least two minutes and Spotify will discuss with the holders of these rights to value the noise streams at a fraction of the value of the music streams.
This is just the beginning, said the head of the music distribution platform Stem, Kristin Graziani, at the beginning of November about the changes planned by Spotify, but judged them to be steps in the right direction.