in this case (the most high profile law enforcement case i'm aware of), the prosecutors looked at all royalties received by the bad actor. you only receive royalties if artificial streams _aren't_ detected — the service that isn't paying the bad actor is the one that detected the activity.

you can learn more about our investments to protect against artificial streaming here: artists.spotify.com/artificial-s...

and a helpful recent example here: musically.com/2024/09/12/s...

my only request is: spotify pays out about a third of global streaming revenue — but typically represents more than 50% of indie artists' streaming revenue (like yourself). my hope would be as much time could be spent analyzing that (why we overindex on indie payouts) as per-stream calculations.

i totally respect that and appreciate the conversation. i replied b/c i really appreciate your transparency sharing your royalties by service and wish more artists did that.

spotify — and every other streaming service — pays ~2/3 of revenue back to rightsholders. (of that $10B+ paid out per year, 50% goes to indies, much more than other services.) with the one third we keep, we reinvest in things we hope will grow our business, which then grows the royalty pool.

no i wouldn't! spotify doesn't make any money from the track monetization rules — 0.5% of streams are of songs below the threshold, and payouts to the other 99.5% of streams are increased by 0.5%.

more here: support.spotify.com/us/artists/a...

per stream rate just tells you how many "avg streams per subscriber" a service has. b/c spotify has built the most engaging service where users stream up to 4x more, per stream rate is lower, but retention/acquisition is higher and we grow royalties faster.

spotifynews.substack.com/p/the-truth-...

congrats on all the streams, and i really appreciate the transparency!

i get why "per stream rate" feels intuitive — but the lower "per stream rate" on spotify is actually part of the reason why we're able to pay out more than other services (more than 50% of total royalties in your case).

books: good material, long island compromise

pods: pivot, served, the town, the new music business, popcast deluxe