From vinyl to digital albums, the music industry has evolved. With the digital age, new means of listening to music were developed. One of these many music streaming services is Spotify, launched back in 2008, Spotify with its 345M active users, has become a monopoly in the music streaming industry. In comparison, rival streaming services such as Apple Music and Amazon Music only have 60M and 55M users respectively.
As of March 16th 2021, Spotify is available in 187 countries worldwide, this availability allows for users to experience music from diverse artists and countries and to introduce said users to a variety of new genres and sounds. When we talk about Spotify, two things come to our minds. The first being, songs from artists all around the world and secondly, the podcasts. Over the last year, Spotify has invested heavily in its podcasts, and they now provide users with 2.2million different podcasts. Spotify continues to expand its podcast services by signing renowned celebrities like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
-Shaun Bent from Spotify Accessibility guild on the mic
The Spotify Accessibility guide aims to “provide Spotify with the knowledge and resources to create inclusive experiences for everyone.” They work together with a group of experts to take impactful steps towards making Spotify an inclusive space for everyone, regardless of their physical abilities. Moreover, they work with different organisations to gather user research so that people with disabilities can easily use their platform, which increases its popularity among its users.
Even though many praise Spotify for being inclusive, others voice their concerns regarding the exploitation of its artists. The company gets criticised for its unsustainable compensation to artists. Spotify pays royalties based on how much a certain song was played as compared to the rest of the songs on their platform, they then take 30% of that profit for themselves and pays the rest to the rights holders who then pay their artists, which comes down to a mere 12-13% per cent of the actual revenue. Many petitions have been launched in recent years for Spotify to “pay artists more” and artists, such as Taylor Swift, have even been going on to remove their music from the streaming service for 3 years, back in 2014.
- Taylor Swift at a public appearance
Taylor swift later returned to the streaming service after many discussions with her team and Spotify,
“I think she saw the fans were asking for it. So eventually when the new album came out, she came to Stockholm and spent some time there, figuring out a way that made sense for her,” said Daniel Ek Ceo of Spotify, after Taylor returned to Spotify in 2017.
In today’s modern world, information and entertainment can be accessed in seconds through the internet. As a monopoly and industry leader Spotify should be a model for the music streaming industry. They should use their influence to help new artists gain a wider audience and promote them rather than exploit them by giving them a smaller percentage of revenue generated. Efforts made by the US Copyright Royalties board to increase royalties to 15.1% of Revenue generated were met by criticisms by Spotify as it became clear that they did not intend to change their policies for the betterment of artists. Conclusively, it can be said that Spotify is not completely at fault as the royalties issue is far greater, it involves not only the artists own personal contract with their label but also the policies of the country they reside in. However, these criticisms against Spotify only seem to grow as the company becomes bigger.
