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Business News Digital
Spotify reportedly pays out $300 million in first quarter of 2015
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 5 June 2015
Spotify’s total payments to rights holders rose by another $300 million in the first quarter of 2015, according to Billboard. This means the company has now paid out $3 billion to music rights owners since launching in 2008, $2 billion of which has come in since the beginning of 2014.
The booming payments come as some in the music community continue to criticise the royalties streaming services pay. Though sometimes detractors lump all streaming services together, and it’s unfair to group Spotify with YouTube and SoundCloud in this domain.
And sometimes – especially on the publisher/songwriter side – you wonder what periods royalty statements being scrutinised relate to, given the challenge of crunching so much usage data, and the fact that where collective licensing is involved, money can take a while to move through the system, especially between countries. Which is to say, the fact so much of Spotify’s payments have come in since 2014 make it important not to form an opinion on 2013 figures.
Of course, naysayers might point out that while it’s all great that Spotify is spitting so much money into the recorded music industry, those payments are still shrouded in secrecy keeping artists in the dark about how their money is divided up.
But what we do know is that the money going to the songwriters and publishers is much less, and it’s hard to see how that issue can be resolved any time soon, DSPs like Spotify finding themselves caught up in the middle of a battle between the recording and publishing divisions of (often) the same companies.
And anyway, even if we solve all that, Spotify is still burning fast through its venture capital, streaming music still being a loss-leading business, certainly on a global level.
But it would be a shame to end this story on a downer, on what should be a joyous BBC Music Day. Luckily, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has spoken about his plans for the service and how he’s going to make it a sustainable long-term success story.
Sell it, you say? No way. Well, not just to make a fast buck. Speaking to Dagens Nyheter, reports Reuters, Ek said: “We want to go further with our platform. The only case where we would be interested in selling the company is if someone would offer the possibility of a larger platform”.
