Spotify has today launched http://www.spotifyartists.com, a new website that attempts to combat some “bad press” recently about the way that they pay out royalties.
The site covers “best practices”, a more detailed explanation of the model they use to pay artists, and also ways that independent artists can get their music on Spotify through digital distributors.
On top of this, Spotify will also roll out free analytics for artists by means of a partnership with Next Big Sound.
The site explains in detail the facts and figures about how it all works, but for now it’s pretty certain that artists will remain unconvinced about using Spotify as a revenue stream. It’s still a very touchy subject, but Spotify claims that they don’t think about artists in a “per stream” payout way (despite noting their “variables have led to an average “per stream” payout to rights holders of between $0.006 and $0.0084.”), and that if they continue their success, artists could receive up to 5x more per stream than they do currently.
It’s easy to get blinded by figures on the site as there is a huge amount of data, but it’s worth getting stuck in to see if any of the questions marks that hang over the service for you can be answered. This one (the big one) however, will remain out there for a while, we’d imagine:
“What is the correct amount to pay an artist for one play of one song on Spotify (/Rdio/Pandora)?”
What do you think? Let us know…