According to the 2023 figures, 1,250 artists will receive more than $1 million in royalties; 11,600 will receive more than $100,000 and 66,000 will receive more than $10,000 – a number that has nearly tripled since 2017.

Among the artists’ songs that are most listened to on Spotify, it’s not just the English language that dominates. Songs in Spanish, German, Portuguese, French and Korean were among those whose works stood out.

According to Charlie Hellman, vice president and global head of music products at Spotify, independent artists and independent record labels received $4.5 billion, which is half of all royalties paid by the music streaming platform.

In December, Spotify announced it was laying off 17% of its global staff for the third time in 2023 in a bid to cut costs while focusing on making a profit.

“Songs that generate less than a thousand streams in a year will generate just a few cents in royalties,” Hellman explains.

Spotify and most other streaming services pay royalties to the rights holders of the music on their platform, a number that is determined by “streamshare.” This is calculated by adding up the number of times music owned or controlled by a rights holder has been streamed and dividing by the total number of streams in that market.

Accordingly, larger rights holders have a larger percentage of market share. A listener streaming an artist 25% of the time does not mean that that artist will receive 25% of the listener’s subscription fee.

Spotify says that by 2024, it will no longer pay for songs with fewer than 1,000 streams per year.

In an email sent to employees, CEO Daniel Eck said Spotify is taking “significant action to optimize its costs,” adding that the company hired too many employees in 2020 and 2021, when capital was cheap and tech companies had the ability to invest significant sums in team expansion.

“Over the last two years, we’ve put significant emphasis on building Spotify into a truly great and sustainable business – one designed to achieve our goal of being the world’s leading audio company and one that will consistently drive profitability and growth into the future,” Ek said in an internal memo that was shared on Spotify’s website.

“While we’ve made worthy strides, as I’ve shared many times, we still have work to do. Economic growth has slowed dramatically and capital has become more expensive. Spotify is not an exception to these realities”, he continued.

After reporting a third-quarter profit of 65 million euros ($70.7 million), Spotify attributed its financial success to reduced spending on marketing and personnel. Earlier this year, the company increased subscription plan prices and diversified its offerings by venturing into podcasts and audiobooks.

The recent wave of job cuts marks another step in Spotify’s ongoing efforts to streamline its operations. Like many other tech firms focused on growth, Spotify has been compelled to trim costs over the past year due to higher interest rates and a challenging macroeconomic environment.

The company initially reduced its workforce by 6%, affecting approximately 600 employees at the beginning of the year. Subsequently, in June, Spotify implemented a further round of layoffs, affecting 2% of its staff, or around 200 roles.

According to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, the price of Amazon Music Unlimited’s individual plan for Prime members will rise from $8.99 to $9.99 per month. The price of the family plan will also go up, increasing from $15.99 to $16.99 per month.

The annual individual plan is expected to cost $99 per year and the family plan is expected to cost $169 per year.

Amazon spokeswoman Rebecca Silverstein tells The Verge that new customers will start seeing the new price “plus applicable taxes” next week. And those who already have a subscription will see the new price on their first bill “on or after” September 19.

We remind you that earlier this year Amazon increased the price of the Amazon Music Unlimited service for people who are not subscribed to Prime.

Raising service prices is a new trend among music companies, with Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Premium and Tidal also changing their prices to higher ones in the past few months.

According to the company, the change was made to align the desktop experience with its mobile app. You can now browse, view, and reorganize Spotify’s libraries as you would on mobile.

The left pane includes a clean interface with Home, Search and Your Library icons, and below them, icons of recently played artist tracks and album artwork, allowing for quick and easy listening. Additionally, clicking the library icon expands this playlist for additional details and a list of names.

On the right side of the screen, you’ll find the Now Playing view, which displays the current song or podcast, along with additional information and details like tour dates, merchandise, transcriptions, or episode descriptions for podcasts.

Spotify’s new updates also include a few helpful tips to get you started with the revamped interface; they are as follows:

Compact: By default, you’ll see an expanded view of your library that you can collapse at any time.

Search and filter your library: The new library design allows you to switch through your dedicated channels for music, podcasts and audiobooks and search only your library.

Customizable: You can move and pin playlists in the Library, as well as drop songs into playlists that can be edited.

Spotify and Archewell Audio, Meghan and Harry’s production company, said Thursday in a joint statement that they were ending their contract.

“Spotify and Archewell Audio have mutually agreed to part ways and are proud of the series we made together,”

the companies said.

According to a source familiar with the situation, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wanted to move away from Spotify’s exclusive distribution to find a new outlet for their audio projects.

According to another source, however, Spotify was expecting more content from Archewell Audio – noting that nearly three years into the contract, they have only delivered one series, essentially putting the overall deal in limbo.

Another Spotify exclusive podcast was with Barack and Michelle Obama, which ended a year ago. In that case, Spotify said it declined to renew the deal. According to sources, the Obamas wanted their podcast programming to be distributed as widely as possible, rather than exclusive to Spotify. The pair’s Higher Ground subsequently inked a first-look deal with Audible.

Who will be the next celebrity with a short-lived exclusive podcast on the music streaming platform remains to be seen.

And which celebrity would you like to listen to on Spotify? Email us at [email protected].

According to the charges, the company violated the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The issue relates to the way the music streaming platform handles users’ personal data and customers’ access to the information.

While Spotify provides the data it has on request by an individual, the company has not been specific enough about how this data is used.

The Swedish Data Protection Authority (IMY) found that although Spotify provides users with personal data it processes on request, it “does not inform clearly enough about how this data is used by the company”. It also said Spotify should be more transparent “about how and for what purposes individuals’ personal data is processed”. The lack of clarity meant that “it was difficult for individuals to understand how their personal data was being processed and to check whether the processing of their personal data was lawful”, the IME added.

The regulator said it considered the issues to be of a “low level of seriousness” and noted that the music company had taken steps to address them. IMY set the fine based on these factors, as well as Spotify’s revenue and number of users. The decision on the fine was made with the help of other data protection authorities in the EU, given that Spotify has users in many countries.

The layoffs were announced by Sahar Elhabashi, Spotify’s vice president, in a memo to employees, saying those affected would be provided “generous benefits.”

Elhabashi also said the “fundamental pivot from a more uniform proposition will allow us to support the creator community better.”

Since 2020, the company has spent 493 million euros ($526 million) on four different podcast acquisitions, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

In addition, Spotify has entered into sponsorship deals with celebrities such as Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and Joe Rogan.

Spotify Premium Mini allows you to download 30 songs and unlimited ad-free music tracks on 1 mobile device for P1 per day or P26 per week. This is also what differentiates it from Premium plans that start at P149 per month.

But there is one condition to benefit from the services of the new partnership. The messaging platform said the offer is available to users of its app who are 18 years of age or older and are new or existing Spotify users who have never previously used Spotify’s offers or been a subscriber to any of Spotify’s Premium offerings.

Rakuten Viber CEO Ofir Eyal said they partnered with Spotify to provide Viber users with “fun features that are effortless to use.”

Activating the new option is done through various promo posts on Viber and with the latest version of the chat app.

The company’s decision to remove songs that are created by artificial intelligence comes after Spotify and other streaming services began receiving complaints of fraud and platform overload. According to the FT’s sources, music industry giant Universal Music Group has warned streaming service providers about “suspicious streaming activity” of Boomy tracks.

“Artificial streaming is a longstanding, industry-wide issue that Spotify is working to stamp out across our service.”

Spotify commented.

Representatives from Boomy were quick to comment, saying the platform is “categorically opposed” to any manipulation or artificial streaming of any kind.

“The recent explosive development of generative artificial intelligence, if unchecked, will increase the flow of unwanted content across platforms and create rights issues under existing copyright law.”

say the company.

Last month, UMG sent an email to streaming services, including Spotify, asking them to block AI services from accessing music catalogues for training purposes.

While music industry giants fight for control over AI, some artists, like Grimes, are taking the side of the innovative technology. It has allowed creators to use its voice in attempts to create AI music, but on the condition that certain rules are followed and royalties are split.

The Stream On virtual event hosted in Los Angeles was attended by music artists, songwriters, podcasters, video content creators and writers from around the world.

During the event, Spotify CEO Daniel EC said the goal of the changes is to grow the music platform’s 500+ million monthly active users and build careers for all content creators on the platform.

“Stream On is about all the ways we are bringing Spotify to life and letting creators at all stages of their careers know that we are open for business. We focus on building the best home for them – a place where they can establish a career, thrive and grow. We’re enabling more creativity, discovery and personalization than ever before by providing the best resources, support, and interactivity.”

Daniel EK told the audience.

During the presentation, Spotify unveiled a significant redesign of its app that takes advantage of investments in personalization technology while using a similar short video channel to the one popularized by TikTok.

In Spotify’s updated mobile app, users and subscribers will have access to several new features, such as vertically scrolling “discovery” channels, a new “Smart Shuffle” mode for recommending playlists, a new auto-play feature for podcasts, and more.

Features such as Smart Shuffle will only be available to subscribers, while other new TikTok-inspired channels will be available to everyone.
The changes aim to make the user interface more vibrant and interactive.