If Spotify is paying out 70 percent of gross revenue, if you control your masters and you’re going there directly, the payouts could be higher than if you’re working with a label.

“For some of the artists who have the worst experience with Spotify, it’s because they have a terrible contract with their label. “I’ve said it a million times, but the labels are a little bit complicit in this,” he says. King is quick to point out that it’s not just Spotify who is to blame for artists not receiving fair pay for their work. I’m not saying Spotify is just an awareness vehicle, but for many artists, there wouldn’t be an opportunity to reach anybody.” When I was at the labels, you’d dream about an opportunity to reach millions of people. “I think the truth is a little different. “It’s pretty bad optics that Spotify is paying one person $200 million when they have to know that there’s a whole different conversation going on around how they’re not paying artists,” he says. So what’s the next chapter in this saga, for musicians, Spotify, and the music business at large? We asked several of the instructors of the Berklee Online course, Music Business Trends and Strategies.Ĭourse author Mike King says it was almost inevitable that an argument that began as a stance on misinformation has come back to artist royalties, an issue that has long been at the center of streaming services’ business models, but only exacerbated by the amount that Spotify reportedly paid Joe Rogan. If they don’t own the rights to their masters, they don’t have control over where their music is available. In the weeks that have followed, there has been no mass exodus of artists leaving Spotify, but that has very little to do with whether or not they agree with Spotify’s endorsement of Joe Rogan or Spotify’s payment model: In many cases artists haven’t left Spotify, in part because they can’t. That reported number has since doubled to $200 million, according to the New York Times. 003 percent of a penny? Just take me off! I don’t want to generate money that pays this.”Īt the time Arie posted this Instagram story, Rogan’s Spotify deal was reported to be worth $100 million.

Young’s off-again/on-again bandmates in Crosby, Stills & Nash removed most of their classic work, as did Joni Mitchell and India.Arie, the latter of whom not only cited Rogan’s stance on vaccines, but also his “language around race,” and produced a montage of him repeatedly using the n-word on his show. In the same Instagram story where she posted the clips, Arie said, “Spotify is built on the back of the music streaming, so they take this money that’s built from streaming, and they pay this guy $100 million but they pay us. In the wake of Young’s Rogan-related boycott of Spotify, several other artists have also removed the music that they hold the rights to. Not both.” Spotify responded by honoring his request and pulling all of the Neil Young music that he has the rights to-certain soundtrack and guest appearances remain-and as a gesture of good faith to Young’s original criticism about misinformation, the company added a content advisory to episodes of Joe Rogan’s podcast. Then Neil Young gave the music streaming company an ultimatum: “They can have Rogan or Young. When Neil Young removed his music from Spotify in January of 2022, his chief complaint was that “Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines.” He cited The Joe Rogan Experience, a podcast that Spotify hosts exclusively on its platform (a right that the company reportedly paid the host $200 million for in 2020), as the source of said fake information.

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