this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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But do they really need that extra dollar? They already pay less than a percent to artists. So why?
They also have staff that needs to maintain / improve the IT infrastructure. And those workers also need a salary raise to keep up with rising inflation.
Do you think the songs just magically appear on your device?
No, i think hard working artists like me put them there, and pay for the ability to do so. I'm not saying people that work at Spotify don't deserve a paycheck, i'm saying the artists need a larger one.
Artists do definitely get shafted when it comes to royalties. But let's not pretend they don't need to raise prices at this point. The last one was in 2011, which means that they were probably burning investors' money to be able to afford that.
The period of cheap money is over. So a $1 increase is not that bad. Still agree that more of that should be passed down to artists.
do you think most of the money doesn't go to shareholders?
Spotify has never paid a dividend, and a quick search points to that they have done a stock buyback once. I think it's quite safe to say that most of the money does not go to the shareholders.
Most of the money goes to the rights holders, which incidentally happen to be large shareholders in Spotify, but this claim is disingenious.
They did have $1B stock buyback in 2021. They don't pay dividends though.
they report to pay ~70%
https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/#box-2
The right holders are mostly big record companies (who own spotify) that have songs that always make it into all the playlists. The Artists don't get much out of it. Other streaming services like deezer offer a model that is more fair for indipendant artists.
Inflation. Currency is worth less across the world.
They are getting less moneys worth without raising the price.