Spotify changes rules for paying artists seeking better payments for professionals

November 21, 2023

2 min read

Spotify on Tuesday announced some significant changes to its rules for paying royalties to artists working with the platform. Starting in 2024, Spotify will no longer pay for songs with a small number of streams. It will also increase the minimum length required for noise recordings to be eligible for payments.

New rules for song royalty payments on Spotify

As announced by Spotify in a blog post, the changes aim to ensure better payments to “emerging and professional artists.” The company explains that as its catalog has grown considerably, it has discussed with industry partners new ways to give more value to real artists and “further deter artificial streaming.”

According to the company, “bad actors” distribute audio content for artificial streaming to take advantage of royalty payments. To prevent this, Spotify will now require songs to have at least 1,000 streams per year for the artist to be paid.

Another change impacts noise recordings. Spotify explains that some people split audio with white or static noise, both of which are becoming quite popular, into multiple short tracks. That way, they put these audios in long playlists without listeners noticing so that they earn “outsized payments.”

To fight this, Spotify is increasing the minimum length of audio labeled as functional noise recordings to two minutes in order to be eligible for royalty payments. The limit doesn’t seem to apply to regular songs.

The platform also explains that it won’t take the revenue from these tracks for itself. Instead, Spotify will distribute this money among eligible artists, increasing the amount they’re paid per stream.

Spotify is considered one of the platforms that pay artists the least, giving them around $0.0033 per stream. Apple Music pays $0.01 per stream, while Tidal pays $0.013. Hopefully, with this change, artists will be better off per stream on Spotify.