Effective April 1st, Spotify has announced a new policy where all tracks with less than 1,000 streams will be demonetised. In the report “Modernising our royalty system” published by the platform in 2020, it was discovered that 99.5% of all streams on Spotify are for tracks that have more than 1,000 streams. Spotify claims that this move will not affect the size of the music royalty pool that is paid out to the rights holders. Instead, it will make use of the tens of millions of dollars annually to increase the payments to eligible tracks, rather than distributing the funds in $0.03 payments.
Spotify requires a minimum amount of royalties to be withdrawn by labels, which is typically between $2 and $50 per withdrawal. However, these payments often don’t reach the uploaders since banks charge a fee to make the transaction, and insignificant payments are often forgotten. To combat artificial streaming, Spotify has also instituted a policy that requires a minimum number of unique listeners for royalties to apply.
Before this policy, “functional genres” like white noise or nature sounds could generate income from 30 seconds of play, but now two minutes of playtime is required. Bloomberg reports that Spotify is also increasing its subscription prices. According to the report, Spotify’s individual subscription plan will see a rise of $1 a month, while Duo and Family plans will increase by $2. Spotify has recently updated its Premium service after over a decade of a set price for the music streaming service.
Spotify’s new policies include demonetising tracks with less than 1,000 streams, requiring a minimum number of unique listeners, and increasing its subscription prices. These changes come as Spotify attempts to combat fraudulent streaming and assist users in managing royalties. Full details on the new policies can be found on the Spotify website
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