{"id":205373,"date":"2021-03-18T18:04:30","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T15:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/spotify-launches-loud-clear-transparency-initiative\/"},"modified":"2021-03-18T18:04:30","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T15:04:30","slug":"spotify-launches-loud-clear-transparency-initiative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/spotify-launches-loud-clear-transparency-initiative\/","title":{"rendered":"#Spotify Launches \u201cLoud & Clear\u201d Transparency Initiative"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Spotify Launches \u201cLoud & Clear\u201d Transparency Initiative<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

Spotify<\/a> has launched Loud & Clear<\/a>, a new web portal that presents data on how Spotify streams are determined and paid out. Months in the making, the website launched today following a series<\/a> of protests outside Spotify offices by the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers. Announcing the initiative, Spotify founder\/CEO Daniel Ek said<\/a>: \u201c57K artists now represent 90% of monthly streams on Spotify\u2014a number that has quadrupled in just six years. Our goal is to help musicians that aspire to be, or are professional to make a living.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charlie Hellman, the vice president and head of marketplace at Spotify, who has been with the company for a decade, tells Pitchfork the initiative aims to offer artists and songwriters more transparency about the streaming economy. \u201cFor all the time I\u2019ve been at Spotify, artist payouts and royalties have been an everyday topic\u2014but I think externally, we haven\u2019t said as much as we ought to to contribute more to the conversation,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s really what we\u2019re trying to do here: Share a bit more and acknowledge that artists really deserve more clarity around how this music streaming economy is working.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Loud & Clear offers several resources to that end, including a video called \u201cLoud & Clear: How the Money Flows\u201d and a section with several graphs detailing how many artists are meeting different revenue thresholds on Spotify. According to the data, 870 artists each generated over $1 million in recording and publishing royalties in 2020; 1,820 generated over $500,000; 7,800 generated over $100,000; and 13,400 generated over $50,000.<\/p>\n

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Hellman claims that Spotify\u2019s incentives are aligned with those of artists. He cites the data and the massive year-on-year growth in artists reaching these royalty numbers. For example, the number of artists who can generate royalties of $50,000 or more per year on Spotify has increased by 80% in the span of four years, from 7,300 in 2017 to 13,400 in 2020.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf you look at those graphs of how artists of different earning thresholds have grown over the past four years, what you clearly see is that Spotify has invested in a more engaging consumer experience: Having better programming, launching in new countries, all the things we do to invest in our business\u2014they grow the pie for everybody,\u201d Hellman said. \u201cWe\u2019re constantly testing to see what is the revenue-maximizing price for [any given] market, because if we can find the revenue-maximizing price, that\u2019s best for Spotify and it\u2019s best for all artists. When we grow our revenues, artists\u2019 revenues grow. When we make our programming better, more artists can fit in and have a chance to grow an audience.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Former Galaxie 500 member Damon Krukowski, who is a co-founder of the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers, tweeted that the Loud & Clear website does not provide the promised transparency on key issues:<\/p>\n

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https:\/\/twitter.com\/dada_drummer\/status\/1372542350069731330<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Loud & Clear explains the current \u201cstreamshare\u201d system that dictates royalty distribution to rightsholders, but it doesn\u2019t broach the topic of user-centric payment models, which would instead pay out royalties from each listener\u2019s subscript<\/a>ion based on what they listened to, rather than calculating their share of the total pie. \u201cWe\u2019re definitely interested in those kinds of conversations, because any innovation or change that would help distribute more royalties to artists that would really benefit from it as they\u2019re developing their career is definitely something that we always want to explore,\u201d said Hellman when asked about UCPM. \u201cWe recently contributed to some inquiries about that model<\/a>; unfortunately, the result of that research was that it does not seem like it\u2019d have the effect we had hoped for, which was to shift more royalties to developing artists, and instead might have the opposite effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In the context of the study, that last point is contestable: While gains for the smallest artists would likely be minimal, one interpretation of the data would suggest UCPM could level out remuneration across a diverse range of genres, as well as marginally increasing payouts to mid-tier artists.<\/p>\n

At the bottom of the Loud and Clear portal is an FAQ<\/a> and question form for artists to submit feedback on the site. \u201cI\u2019m sure this is something that we continue to iterate, and we want to hear from people,\u201d Hellman said. \u201cI\u2019d love to see people engaged with the site, so that we can have this as a foundation to the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pitchfork has emailed UMAW representatives for further response.<\/p>\n

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