Spotify rolls out modernised Royalty System for artists

Spotify is planning to reduce payments for "noise" content, such as short recordings of rain or other sound

Spotify has officially announced its Royalty System for emerging and professional artists.

Spotify is working with artist distributors, independent labels, major labels, label distributors, and artists and their teams regarding its Royalty System.

The new policies will be introduced to further deter artificial streaming, better distribute small payments that aren’t reaching artists, and rein in those attempting to game the system with noise. Spotify plans to address these issues at its earliest so that it can efficiently distribute the revenue.

Through the new system, the money that used to go to smaller artists and alleged fraudsters will be redistributed to those above that 1,000 play-per-year threshold. Moreover, Spotify is planning to reduce payments for certain types of "noise" content, such as short recordings of rain or other sounds. Specifically, recordings under two minutes will be affected by these cuts. Additionally, Spotify is considering revising the royalty model specifically for these noise recordings to ensure their payouts remain lower than those for actual songs.