When it comes to streaming music, Spotify is hard to beat. With over 170 million paying subscribers and an estimated 60 million active users, the Swedish-based media streaming giant is the undisputed leader of the streaming music industry.
However, despite its immense success, Spotify has been criticized for how little it pays artists for their work. According to a recent study from the University of Georgia, Spotify pays approximately $0.0038 per stream. This means that if an artist has a song with 100,000 streams on Spotify, they will receive just $380.
The reason why Spotify pays so little to artists can be attributed to several factors. First of all, streaming services such as Spotify are designed to be low-cost services for consumers.
As such, they keep costs down by paying relatively low royalties to artists and labels. Secondly, due to the sheer number of tracks available on Spotify (over 50 million), it is impossible for them to negotiate individual payments with every artist or label.
In addition to these factors, there is also the issue of competition from other streaming services such as Apple Music and Deezer. These services have also been criticized for their low payments and this has put downward pressure on prices across the industry.
Finally, there is also the issue of piracy which continues to be a problem in the music industry as a whole. Piracy reduces revenue from legitimate sources such as streaming services which further reduces how much money goes back into artist’s pockets.
Conclusion:
Overall, there are several reasons why Spotify pays so little to artists – including low cost models designed for consumers; competition from other streaming services; and piracy which decreases legitimate revenue sources. While this may be frustrating for many artists who rely on streaming services as a source of income, it remains an unfortunate reality in today’s music industry landscape.