Capital Economy, Business and Finance
Spotify compared itself to the legendary Tower Records franchise in a report in which the streaming giant said it paid more than $10 billion in royalties, or “more than any single retailer has ever paid in a year”.
The report serves as a defence against accusations that Spotify doesn’t give enough money to artists, but the headline figure needs examining.
The $10 billion is paid to music publishers and record labels, meaning only a fraction gets to performers.
The number also unintentionally demonstrates the corporate concentration of music streaming, whereby Spotify sits atop a small pile of heavyweights that dominate the industry and effectively determine the income of most artists in any given year.
In Spotify’s defence the 100,000th ranked artist now earns nearly $6,000 in royalties, ten times what they would have been paid in 2014.
But that still leaves another 100,000 or so who pick up less than that.
