Spotify will pay no royalties on tracks with under 1000 streams a year [CONFIRMED]

[UPDATED] Spotify will not pay any royalties on tracks until they receive more than 1000 streams yearly, according to multiple sources.

The new threshold, expected to go into effect early next year, is part of efforts by Spotify, other music streamers, and major labels to redistribute royalties from what UMG CEO Lucien Grainge calls”garbage” tracks to more active artists.

42% of the 158 million tracks on Spotify were played ten or fewer times last year, according to Billboard chart data provider Luminate. 67.1 million tracks were played ten or fewer times. 38 million tracks on Spotify were not played even once in 2022.

Spotify’s Loud & Clear report said that in 2022, 62.5% of its 100 million tracks have not been played 1000 times since release, much less in a year.

The 1000 streams threshold was tipped in a Consequences op-ed from Kristin Graziani, the president of music distribution platform Stem, and confirmed by MBW and Billboard.

While some fear that the changes are unfair to emerging artists, Grazani embraces the change.

“In addition to increasing payouts, we must plug these holes, or else the same bad actors will continue to profit at the expense of artists who are none the wiser,” says Grazani. These new policies will “have little to no negative impact on career artists; instead, it will make more money available to them by way of a larger royalty pool.”

Spotify has said that the new model will shift $1 billion to ‘working artists’ over the next five years.

ALSO:

• Spotify says new model will shift $1B to ‘working artists’ in 5 year

• Not everyone will like Spotify’s new Royalty Structure

Bruce Houghton is the Founder and Editor of Hypebot, a Senior Advisor at Bandsintown, President of the Skyline Artists Agency, and a Berklee College Of Music professor.