Swedish music streaming service Spotify is today one of the most popular platforms in the world, with the help of which users get access to a huge library of licensed music, which today totals more than 60 million tracks.
Spotify is one of the few services that provide free access to licensed digital content. Everyone will be able to get this opportunity by simply registering with Spotify and creating their own personal account. The streaming music service also provides a paid subscription – Premium, for which a monthly subscription fee will be debited from the user’s account.
Advertising and paid subscriptions are the main sources of income for the Swedish streaming music service. After covering the costs and operating costs, the service administration decides to pay royalties to artists for the audio content they post. Royalty Spotify pays monthly.
Streaming is currently the main source of income for the recording industry. In 2020, he brought income in the amount of a little more than $1.6 billion. At the same time, some musicians complain that the payments they receive are insignificant.
Currently, Spotify pays from $0.0026 to $0.0049 per stream. At the end of March 2021, the Swedish streaming service opened access to the Loud & Clear application for users. This application will be able to give a complete idea not only of the economic model of Spotify, but also explain to the musicians how the system of deductions from streaming is arranged.
The creation of Loud & Clear is partly due to numerous claims from musicians who have been accusing Spotify of opacity of deductions from auditions for more than a year. So, in mid-March, artists from several countries staged pickets near Spotify representative offices. Protesters advocated, among other things, making changes to the current financial model of the largest streaming.
Spotify distributed all the musicians presented on the platform into several categories, depending on the number of monthly listeners. With Loud & Clear, you can see the average amount of royalties that the streaming service deducts to an ordinary representative of each category. In addition, you are shown how many musicians around the world fall into one category or another. As conceived by Spotify, this information will help musicians assess their prospects and understand their place in the streaming service ecosystem.
Musicians should take into account that the earnings shown on Loud & Clear do not equal the final amount paid to the musician. This amount is distributed among labels, copyright holders, distributor and only then gets to the artist. It all depends on the specific conditions and agreements of the musician with other market players.
