The music streaming industry is a contentious one for artists, many of whom don't feel like they're being paid enough for their work.
As the biggest player in the field, the light often turns to Spotify to reveal how much it pays artists and why it doesn't give them a bigger slice of the pie.
To help answer these questions and more, Spotify has launched a website called Loud & Clear that aims to increase transparency on the economics of music streaming.
Spotify Launches Loud & Clear
Loud & Clear is a new Spotify website that "aims to increase transparency by sharing new data on the global streaming economy and breaking down the royalty system, the players, and the process".
The purpose of this website is not for you to find out how much money your favorite artist has earned on Spotify. That data remains private. While you can approximate it based on the number of streams, the precise figures depends on the contracts in place, as Loud & Clear explains.
However, you can see data in context. Spotify claims it paid over $5 billion in royalties to rights holders in 2020 alone, with a total of $23 billion since the platform launched in 2008.
You can use the interactive guide on the site to see how many artists on Spotify earned within a threshold. For example, 184,500 artists in 2020 generated over $1k in royalties. At the top of that scale, 870 artists made over $1 million.
There's also a tool where you can enter a number of track streams or monthly listeners to see how that compares against other artists. Based on 2020 data, a track that has been streamed one million times would be in the top 551,000 tracks on Spotify globally.
What Questions Does Loud & Clear Answer?
It's great to see Spotify giving some much-needed transparency to how payments for music streaming works. Fans are increasingly keen to ensure that their favorite artists are earning enough.
Take Taylor Swift, who is rerecording all her back catalog so that she owns the sole rights to it. Her fan base are hugely supportive of this—despite Swift's wealth, they want only her to profit from her work.
Spotify's Loud & Clear site has a great question and answer section that asks interesting questions like:
- Wasn't the music industry better off before streaming?
- Is streaming only helping music's biggest stars?
- Why doesn't Spotify just charge listeners more?
- How much money does Spotify keep?
The music streaming industry isn't perfect, but initiatives like these are only beneficial for everyone.