Spotify’s new royalty model is the latest attempt to try to bring streaming royalties in line spotify hörer kaufen with the dynamics of todays’ streaming market. It has many laudable objectives and intentions, but there is no escaping the threat perceived by artists and companies that operate in the long tail. With many of those artists set to no longer collect even paltry royalty statements, the question is what those artists will do next.
Most will likely still find it important to keep their music on Spotify for discovery and exposure purposes. There is no harm in keeping up what is already there, and relatively few creators will actually take anything down. But many will increasingly focus their efforts on other platforms, bringing their fans and cultural capital with them, and the next class of early-stage creators might not automatically distribute their music to Spotify. Already, the base of self-releasing creators who upload directly to user-generated content (UGC) platforms is growing faster than those who release to streaming services.
Meanwhile, Deezer has a slightly more fandom-centric new model (at least, one that accounts for active versus passive listening), and TikTok Music has struck a deal with DistroKid to bring more independent artists on board. It is possible that the streaming space is about to get a lot more fragmented, and that may not be a bad thing.The streaming conversation has revolved around finding the next remuneration model. But it does not make much sense for all streaming services to employ the same one, since their userbases behave so differently.