Published
Fri, Apr 5, 2024, 17:17
- As of April 1st, tracks must have a minimum of 1,000 streams in the past 12 months to receive royalties.
Streaming behemoth Spotify has implemented new critieria for royalty payments—a move that critics say is incredibly hurtful to small artists.
For creators to receive royalties, a track must now be streamed at least 1,000 times over a 12-month period and have a certain number of unique listeners. This is "to ensure users can’t game the system by streaming the track hundreds of times in order to qualify," the company said on its website. The unique listener threshold isn't disclosed publicly "to prevent further manipulation by bad actors."
First announced late last year, the policy went into effect on April 1st and has sparked massive backlash online.
86 percent of tracks on Spotify have below 1,000 streams, the Union for Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW), a group fighting for better royalty payments, said in a statement. "This new policy will impact small artists the most—the same artists that Spotify claims to support." UMAW described the rules as "predatory behavior" and called for an additional royalty that pays artists a penny per stream.
The Swedish company, however, says emerging musicians will benefit.
"Tracks with between one and 1,000 annual streams generate $0.03 per month on average and only represent 0.5 percent of total streams and royalties generated from Spotify," according to its website. "In the aggregate though, that money adds up to tens of millions of dollars per year. Moving forward, that money is reallocated by streamshare to increase the payments going to eligible tracks."
For more on the new rule, check Spotify's website below.