The Pop Corporation

Well, Spotify have decided the way to fix the broken royalties model is to stop paying small bands. Now, that’s not how they’ll be spinning it, but it’s the reality of the situation.

See, Spotify have a problem with ‘noise’ tracks and those generating plays by making ‘non music’. So, to fix that, they’re going to stop paying out on songs that have under 1000 plays. If these supposed ‘scam’ songs are racking up hundreds of thousands of plays, then they’ll be fine – but your pal’s DIY band who are trying to make a go of it, they can get stuffed, unless they get a thousand plays.

Now, there’s loads of brilliant, small bands that don’t get a thousand plays, even if they’re the real deal – just not furiously popular yet. If you like new music, you’ll know there’s loads of brilliant bands with no PR machine behind them with plays that just say >1000 next to their name. Is there any point in uploading your music to Spotify at all in the future, unless you’re an established act or someone clever enough to scam the system?

We’re going to find out as the months roll on.

Over at MusicAlly, they’ve reported that Stem president Kristin Graziani said: “All tracks will have to reach a minimum streaming threshold of 1000 streams within 12 months in order to be paid a royalty.”

While many songs will break that threshold, they’ve pointed out that around 62.5m tracks (62.5% of the catalogue) hasn’t reached this newly imposed minimum. That’s ever, not in the yearly model.

Seeing as the company pay so little to independent bands in the first place, you feel that the only use of the service is to act as a basic flyering tool, and hope that listeners are able to pay for physical releases. Not that most bands are able to afford an expensive vinyl or cassette run. Not all bands can make money at shows and with venues taking a cut from on-site merch sales, these are pretty dire times for musicians.