The audio streaming company is developing tools that would allow subscribers to speed up, mash up and otherwise edit songs from their favorite artists, according to people familiar with the discussions. It is a bet on the future of music consumption that Spotify hopes will deepen user engagement and appeal to young users, while generating new revenue for artists.
Kinda hate this.
The streaming giant will increase prices by about $1 to $2 a month in five markets by the end of April, including the UK, Australia and Pakistan, according to people familiar with the matter. It will raise prices in the US, its largest territory, later this year, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential plans.
Brett Martin, writing for the New York Times:
Largely, though not entirely, on the strength of such songs, Farley has managed to achieve that most elusive of goals: a decent living creating music. In 2008, his search-engine optimization project took in $3,000; four years later, it had grown to $24,000. The introduction of Alexa and her voice-activated sistren opened up the theretofore underserved nontyping market, in particular the kind fond of shouting things like “Poop in my fingernails!” at the computer. “Poop in My Fingernails,” by the Toilet Bowl Cleaners, currently has over 4.4 million streams on Spotify alone. To date, that “band,” and the Odd Man Who Sings About Poop, Puke and Pee, have collectively brought in approximately $469,000 from various platforms. They are by far Farley’s biggest earners, but not the only ones: Papa Razzi and the Photogs has earned $41,000; the Best Birthday Song Band Ever, $38,000; the Guy Who Sings Your Name Over and Over, $80,000. Dozens of others have taken in two, three or four digits: the New Orleans Sports Band, the Chicago Sports Band, the Singing Film Critic, the Great Weather Song Person, the Paranormal Song Warrior, the Motern Media Holiday Singers, who perform 70 versions of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” substituting contemporary foods for figgy pudding. It adds up. Farley quit his day job in 2017.
Jon Porter, writing for The Verge:
Spotify’s UK users are getting access to a fourth category of content to sit alongside its existing library of songs, podcasts and audiobooks: online courses. The company is today launching a new experiment that’ll see video-based lessons from BBC Maestro, Skillshare, Thinkific, and PlayVirtuoso made available via Spotify’s apps on mobile and desktop. The experiment is running in just the UK, and there are currently no guarantees that it’ll get a wider more permanent launch.
Spotify is rolling out music videos as a new beta feature for some artists.
The beta version of music videos on Spotify begins rolling out today with a limited catalog of music videos, including hits from global artists like Ed Sheeran, Doja Cat, and Ice Spice, or local favorites like Aluna and Asake.
Lucas Shaw, writing for Bloomberg:
Last year was brutal for the media business, as nearly every major entertainment and technology company fired employees. This year is shaping up to be more of the same.
More than a dozen major corporations across technology, finance and media announced major job cuts this past week, including Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Unity Software Inc. Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music company, plans cuts in the first quarter. Animation studio Pixar will let staff go in the second half. All told, media companies have fired more than 70,000 employees since the start of last year, according to Vivek Couto at Media Partners Asia.
The EU has proposed sweeping changes within the music streaming industry to promote smaller artists and make sure underpaid performers are being fairly compensated.
A resolution to address concerns regarding inadequate streaming royalties for artists and biased recommendation algorithms was adopted by members of the European Parliament (MEPs) on Wednesday, highlighting that no existing EU rules currently apply to music streaming services, despite being the most popular way to consume audio.
Blink-182’s “All the Small Things” becomes the first track from the band to cross the one billion Spotify stream mark.
Paul Sawers, writing for TechCrunch:
Spotify is pulling support for two music festivals in protest against a controversial new tax directed at music-streaming platforms operating in France, and threatened more action will follow in the coming months.
Antoine Monin, managing director for Spotify in the France and Benelux regions, took to X this week to decry a new tax that will impose a levy of what is expected to be between 1.5 and 1.75% on all music-streaming services, with the proceeds going toward the Centre National de la Musique (CNM), which was established in 2020 to support the French music sector.
Spotify has announced they are laying off 1,500 people:
This brings me to a decision that will mean a significant step change for our company. To align Spotify with our future goals and ensure we are right-sized for the challenges ahead, I have made the difficult decision to reduce our total headcount by approximately 17% across the company. I recognize this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions. To be blunt, many smart, talented and hard-working people will be departing us.
Meanwhile, the stock spiked on the news so the CFO cashed in.
Spotify Wrapped has been launched.
Spotify has officially announced their new royalty system:
However, as the royalty pool and catalog on Spotify have surged, three particular drains on the royalty pool have now reached a tipping point. So, we’re working in close collaboration with industry partners — artist distributors, independent labels, major labels, label distributors, and artists and their teams — to introduce new policies to (1) further deter artificial streaming, (2) better distribute small payments that aren’t reaching artists, and (3) rein in those attempting to game the system with noise.
A new threshold of minimum annual streams that a track must meet before it starts to generate royalties. The threshold, according to MBW, will de-monetize tracks that had previously received 0.5% of Spotify’s royalty pool.
Financial penalties for music distributors and labels when fraudulent activity on tracks they have uploaded to Spotify has been detected.
A minimum play-time length that non-music noise tracks, such as bird sounds or white noise, must reach to generate royalties.
To keep the “skip rate” as low as possible, musical artists are increasingly moving a song’s hook or chorus to that initial 30-second sweet spot. Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding, the hosts of the “Switched on Pop” podcast, have coined the term “Pop Overture” to describe a new trend in which a song “will play a hint of the chorus in the first five to 10 seconds so that the hook is in your ear, hoping that you’ll stick around till about 30 seconds in when the full chorus eventually comes in.”
Creators are modifying more than just the introductory sections of tracks for optimal performance on streaming. Every track that is listened to for more than 30 seconds counts as a play, but whether a listener makes it all the way through a song helps to determine whether a streaming service like Spotify will recommend similar songs in the future.
Murray Stassen, writing at Music Business Worldwide:
According to Spotify’s new study, averaged across all artist sizes, ‘super listeners’ on the platform make up 2% of an artist’s monthly listeners, but account for over 18% of monthly streams.
Spotify defines monthly listeners as all listeners that have at least 1 stream over 30 seconds of an artist in the past 28 days. These stats are based on streaming data on the platform between February 15 and March 15.