Reacting to the criticism that Spotify pays very little money to artists, the streaming service's chief executive Daniel Ek claims it has paid more than two billion dollars in royalties since 2008.
- Nov 12, 2014
AceShowbiz - Spotify has finally responded to Taylor Swift's decision to remove her music from the service. Days after the singer called the service "a grand experiment" that doesn't fairly compensate artists, chief executive Daniel Ek said in a lengthy blog post that the company had paid a bunch of money in royalties since it started.
"All the talk swirling around lately about how Spotify is making money on the backs of artists upsets me big time," Ek wrote. "Our whole reason for existence is to help fans find music and help artists connect with fans through a platform that protects them from piracy and pays them for their amazing work."
He went on saying that unlike piracy which pays artist "nothing, zilch, zero," Spotify "has paid more than two billion dollars to labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists. A billion dollars from the time we started Spotify in 2008 to last year and another billion dollars since then."
"And that's two billion dollars' worth of listening that would have happened with zero or little compensation to artists and songwriters through piracy or practically equivalent services if there was no Spotify - we're working day and night to recover money for artists and the music business that piracy was stealing away," he explained.
"When I hear stories about artists and songwriters who say they've seen little or no money from streaming and are naturally angry and frustrated, I'm really frustrated too," he continued. "We will do anything we can to work with the industry to increase transparency, improve speed of payments, and give artists the opportunity to promote themselves and connect with fans."
Ek also pointed out that although Swift pulled her catalog from Spotify, her music is still available everywhere for free. "You can't look at Spotify in isolation - even though Taylor can pull her music off Spotify (where we license and pay for every song we've ever played), her songs are all over services and sites like YouTube and Soundcloud, where people can listen all they want for free. To say nothing of the fans who will just turn back to pirate services like Grooveshark. And sure enough, if you looked at the top spot on The Pirate Bay last week, there was '1989'," he added.
