They also separate streams from paid subscriptions from the ad-supported accounts streams from the paid subscriptions pay out higher royalties than the ones from free accounts. However, this pooling of money isn’t global, they pile it up depending on the location of the stream, since every country has a different subscription fee. This amount is then multiplied by the times a specific recording has been streamed and pays that amount to the corresponding party. The way they distribute these royalties is by adding up the total amount of streams and dividing it by the percentage of the revenue they agreed to pay out, resulting in a payment per-stream. 15.1% goes to songwriters and publishers, and the other 59.9% going to sound recording owners. The deal is that Spotify pays 75% of their total revenue to songwriters, publishers, and sound recording owners. If it’s an independent artist and they own their masters, the payment will go to their distributor and they will pass on the money to the artist, minus whatever fees they charge. ![]() When you stream music made by an artist signed to a major, Spotify pays the label directly, and then they distribute the money or count it towards the artist’s recoupment of any money they owe. Because of this, most of the revenue from these master licenses goes to these labels, and the artist receives a negotiated percentage which usually ranges from 15-20%. As you may know, usually when an artist signs with a record label, they give the label ownership of all their recordings in exchange for money to finance these productions. Now what’s all this rightsholder stuff we’re talking about? The rightsholder is the owner of a master recording. So, to sum up, there’s technically 3 payments involved in streaming, one mechanical, one public performance (both to the songwriter) and one to the sound recording rightsholder. We’ll dive deeper into how this works in a second. On the Sound Recording side, Spotify pays the master’s rightsholder a license to use that recording on their service. This means that your Performance Rights Organization collects your income from Spotify on account of the songwriting payments. On the songwriting side, it was decided that a stream was a combination of a mechanical use and a public performance. In the US this rate is statutory, meaning that in the US Congress sets it, while in UK it’s a percentage of the price of sale. For example, every time a label manufactures a CD, they must pay the songwriters of all the songs a royalty for every single copy they make of said CD. When we talk about mechanicals, these are royalties paid to the songwriter and their publisher for the right to create individual copies. There’s also a series of exclusive rights that comes with the ownership of a copyright that includes making copies, known as the mechanical right, and performing the work to the public. ![]() the song, and the sound recording, a.k.a. In music, there are two separate copyrightable assets when we stream a song and that’s the musical composition, a.k.a. ![]() However, I thought it would be good to write this article with a detailed explanation of how Streaming payouts work and who is getting what, so that we, as the music industry, can better understand how we can improve the remuneration for artists, songwriters, and producers.įirst of all, it’s important to understand the underlying legal framework that allows artists and songwriters to get paid, and that’s Copyright law. Spotify has proposed a lower payment for songwriting royalties which as understandably upset the songwriting community. Recently there’s been a lot of chatter about songwriters’ battle, represented by the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), with Spotify over the negotiations with the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB). Guest post by Juan C Sarassa from Key of B#
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