Spotify have now officially demonetised all songs on the platform with less than 1000 streams.
The policy was launched on April 1 and came after the streaming giant released a report last year, Modernising our royalty system, in which news of the decision first appeared. The move has been planned by the platform for some time.
The new regulations come following months of speculation about new policies the streaming service would be introducing, including rumours that the company would be making it harder for artists to generate royalties from their music.
According to Spotify data, there are around 100million songs on the service, yet only around 37.5million meet the new requirements to generate revenue.
This means that around 60 per cent of tracks will not qualify for the new threshold, although Spotify did recall that these songs make up less than one per cent of the total number of streams on the service.
Spotify said that 99.5 per cent of all streams on the platform “are of tracks that have above 1,000 streams.” They went on to claim that demonetising the tracks won’t result in a “change to the size of the music royalty pool being paid out to rights holders”.
It argued that instead it will “use the tens of millions of dollars annually to increase the payments to all eligible tracks, rather than spreading it out into $0.03 payments.”
Spotify also went on to say it requires a minimum number of unique listeners now if royalties are to apply – a measure brought in to attempt to stop the rise in fake streams after a rise in fraudulent activity was detected.
Late last year, Spotify announced that it was cutting down 17 per cent of its workforce in order to save costs. That was after an earlier decision to lay off another 6 per cent of its staff at the start of 2023, which at the time it said was to promote “speed”.
Chief executive Daniel Ek said he made the “difficult” decision as economic growth has “slowed dramatically”. Spotify employs around 9,000 people, meaning 1,500 jobs were estimated to have been lost in the current round of layoffs.
The news was a surprise to some as just months earlier, the company had announced better-than-expected third-quarter profits and a 6 million boost in subscriber numbers.
In January, Spotify also appeared to suggest that a “superfan clubs” feature could be coming soon.
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