TOO BIG TO FAIL? Spotify Payments Accelerate, $300 Million In Q1
As the debate over payments rages on and rightsholders hold contract negotiations with Apple, Spotify and others, revenue from music streaming and thus its importance to the music industry continues to grow at an accelerated pace. Is music streaming, and in particular Spotify, too big to fail?
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Spotify paid $300 million to rights holders in the first quarter of 2015, according to a new report. Since launching in 2008, Spotify has paid a total of $3 billion in royalties.
If accurate, the $300 million, which were first reported by Billboard, represent a rapid acceleration in payments and increase in Spotify's importance to the music industry.
At the end of 2013, Spotify announced that it had paid $1 billion to rightsholders five years after launch. 11 months later in November 2014, the music streamer said total payments had exceeded $2 billion. Now the 3rd billion in payments has come over just 2 quarters or just about 6 months.
