Yesterday (Thursday 30 July) Music Alley published an interview with CEO of Spotify Daniel Ek. He responded to criticisms over streaming and the insufficient royalties paid to artists that use the platform.
Ek denied the “narrative fallacy” that the streaming behemoth pays artists too little per stream saying that an artist’s position in the music landscape had changed.
“Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape,” he said.
“Where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.”
He asserted that artists now have to release content more frequently and consistently in order to be successful.
“The artists today that are making it realize that it’s about creating a continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans.”
“It’s quite interesting that while the overall pie is growing, and more and more people can partake in that pie, we tend to focus on a very limited set of artists,” Ek told Music Alley.
The interview with Music Alley included discussion of the numbers cited Spotify’s quarterly financial results. It was revealed in Q2 the music streaming platform gained 138 million subscribers and 299 active monthly listeners in that quarter. It also had a huge 13 per cent increase in revenue from last year – $1.89 billion.
“Even today on our marketplace, there’s literally millions and millions of artists. What tends to be reported are the people that are unhappy, but we very rarely see anyone who’s talking about… In the entire existence [of Spotify] I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single artist saying ‘I’m happy with all the money I’m getting from streaming.’”
Ek disputed claims that artists were unhappy with royalties from streaming saying that, “In private” they have said they are happy with revenues, and “there are more and more artists that are able to live off streaming income in itself,” the CEO shared.”
