The Independent reported that Spotify has made healthy investments in podcasts to increase profits and broaden their reach. This is all in a bid to diversify the content featured on their platform and boost revenue. Now, the music industry is calling out the hypocrisy in the streaming platform’s hefty deals with podcasters while artists earn very little per stream, as reported by The Atlantic. The outlet surmised that the problem extends beyond disapproval of Rogan’s explosive podcast.
Per Business Insider, Spotify’s per stream rate falls between $0.03 to $0.05. In a powerful written piece for Spin, eight artists identified their main issues with Spotify — the biggest being that they underpay musicians. In the piece, Alternative rock band Failure wrote a scathing critique of Spotify’s treatment of artists. “Exploiting artists for profit was not invented by Spotify, but it does seem like they were better than anyone else at taking that exploitation to a completely new level, perfecting it with clever use of public assets and software automation,” they wrote. “If artists can’t make a living wage from millions of plays of their content, it’s not a valid model. The business as a whole still isn’t profitable, but that hasn’t stopped the founder [Daniel Ek] from becoming a 3x billionaire in the process.” The rock trio are part of a growing list of artists who pulled their music from the platform, per NME.
