It has been rumored for quite some time, but Spotify just made it official. If your song doesn’t get 1,000 streams in a year, you don’t get paid.
Yesterday, Spotify announced its new payment policy for artists. It basically states that if you do not meet their minimum requirement, the song will not be eligible for payment.
While it’s not a secret that Spotify doesn’t pay artists their worth, some won’t be getting paid at all. Spotify has stated that this is a move to help eliminate fraud. What they have decided to do is, instead of paying these smaller artists, they funnel it to those who do meet the requirement.
Spotify points out that the with this cut and others outlined in the new policy, it will generate an additional $1 billion towards artists over five years. There is no word for how this money will be redistributed. It has assured us that none of that money will go back to Spotify.
It highlighted that 99.5 percent of all of its streams meet the threshold. However, the 0.5 percent account for just $40 million per year. That sounds a bit odd when they say that not paying them somehow equals $1 billion over 5 years ($200 million a year).
So, in the end, we have a very exploitive company taking advantage of those who have a passion to make art for people to enjoy. They now decided to “reverse Robin Hood” small creators by taking from them to pay for everyone else. And the math on how that’s going to happen doesn’t quite math.
I need to scream into a pillow.
Source: Engadget
