Spotify doesn't make profit from music streaming, despite having over 400M monthly active users, because it pays two-thirds of all its revenue to the rights holders.
Spotify doesn't make profit from music streaming, despite having over 400M monthly active users, because it pays two-thirds of all its revenue to the rights holders.
Despite being the king of music streaming, Spotify is struggling financially, but why?
Won't somebody think of the shareholders!
The shareholders are the labels that are getting paid, like Sony. They really can’t lose with Spotify; if Spotify makes more money than they pay in fees the labels win and if Spotify pays out all their revenue to the labels, they are still winning.
So this is why the podcasts are absolutely crammed full of ads?
It frustrates me that I get ads after paying for premium, but the way they weasel out of it is the tagline "unlimited ad free music"... And I guess, podcasts ain't music.
Still, I'm glad they're paying 2/3rds to rights holders. I'm an indie musician, historically a lot of my music was released on labels so they've creamed a good amount of my royalties. I feel like there's a lot of misunderstandings about how much people earn from Spotify (ie publisher / label is often getting a lions share leading to low return for the artist). People see "0.003c per stream" and assume Spotify are taking the piss as it's technically a low number. But, taking 1/3rd is a damn sight better than what the digi retail sites like beatport take (50/50 with the label, who then splits that 50/50 with the artist).
You can self release and self promote on spotify, which imo although there's still a power imbalance, it's a better deal for the artist if you go indie. Meanwhile the labels & publishers seem to go unmentioned when it comes to lack of artist revenue.
They can't really control the fact that podcast producers put ads in their podcasts, no?
I'm not talking about those, I'm fine with that... In some cases they're quite entertaining. I'm taking about the ones Spotify inserts seemingly at random, occasionally in the middle of a joke or sentence. Three at the start, three at the end, three at some random point in the middle. I just fast forward them.
cough cough bullshit cough cough
Boo hoo.