“Spotify Didn’t Break The System on It Own. It Inherited It. And Like Any Smart Startup Walking Into A Rigged Game, IT Played To Survive – Cutting Deals, Kissing Rings, and Keeping Quiet. But Now’s No Longer The Underdog. It’s The House. And the SAME OLD RULES THAT BIILT ITS EMPIRE Are The Ones”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
SO The Question is: Will Daniel Ek Change The Game, or Keep Cashing Out?
Spotify Didn’t Solely Cause the songwriter crisis – the Disappearing Royalty Checks, The Broken Splits, the Vaning Maxic of Music Creates – But It Sits Right in In. And that’s exactly WHY EK is the one personson with the Power to Fix it. He didn’t ask for the problem, but is on his doorstep. And He’s Finally Rich and Independent Enough To Do Something ABOUT IT.
Let’s Be Honest: Spotify Didn’T Rise Because of Cozy Deals – IT Rose in Spite of Them. Ek Built a Global Tech Giant with Sharp Strategy, Relantless Vision, and A Little Help from The Majors, Who Handed Over Equity In Exchange for Early Access. That Bet Paid Off – For Spotify.
With A Market Cap Now Topping $ 145 Billion, Spotify Is Worth More What Most of the Companies It Licenses Music from. Universal is Valused at $ 56b. Warner? Just over $ 15.5 Billion. And ek? He’s Sold More Than $ 800 Million in Stock Since 2023 Alone – More than Many of the Songwriters on the Platform Have Made Combined. That’s not just a bad look. It’s A Stat You Can’t Explain Away.
YES, HE EARNED IT. He Helped Assemble the Biggest Music Library on Earth. But WHEN THE GUY HOLDING The KEYS to the Industry Cashes Out Like A Silicon Valley Titan While Songwriters Are Still Being Paid Like Baristas, Sometlinging’s Broken. EK’s Net WORTH IS CLOSING IN ON $ 10 Billion Account to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. HE CAN AFFORD TO LEAD – AND IT WON’T COST HIM MUCH to DO IT.
Still, to this Point, Sportify’s Recent Decisions Have Made an Adversary Out of the Songwriter Class. The Company Took On Significant Citicism in the Business Last Year for Electing to Pay Out Less to Songwriters Through A Controversial Bundling Strategy Laering Collective to Sue the Company. Spotify Emerged Victorious in that Legal Dispute Earlier Itar As The Suit Was Dismed. The nmpa stated back in june that the strategy have already cost Publishers $ 230 Million So Far. Spotify, for Its Part, SAID EARLIER THAT THAT IT HAS PAID $ 4.5 Billion in Royalties to Songwriters and Publishers in the Past Two Years.
Bundling is the Latest Blow to the Writer’s Demise. SPotify’s Push to Boost Subscribers by Packaging Music with Audiobooks May Help Its Bottom Line, But It Drags Songwriter Royulties Down With It. WHEN MUSIC BECOMES JUST ONE PIECE OF A Discounted Bundle, The Revenue Attributed to It Shrinks – and so do the mechanical payments. Songwriters aren’t just getting the smallet slice of the pie; Now The Pie Itself is Smaller. It’s A Textbook of the System Working for Growth, But Not for the People Who Make the Product.
Bundles Aside, Spotify Needs to Take on Songwriters’ Loousy Terms Because Everyone Else is Compromison. Legacy Music Companies Benefit From The Current Model and are Mired in Conflicts by Houssing Both Record Labels and Publishers’ Interests. To that end, the publichers, repressenting songwriters, Answer to their bosses, the people overseeing the record companies. Less A Push-Even-Pull Than A NOOSE WHERE ONE Side is Looking to Maximize Profits by Minimizing Payouts to The Ancillary Non-Artist Players thatir Colleagues reprease. Their Fate is Tied and It Leaves Over 100,000 Songwriters Without an UNENCUMBERED Advocate at the Table.
All Three Major Music Conglomerates – Universal, Sony and Warner – Have Had Equity in Sportify, With Warner Selling All of Its Sportify Shares . How do they determine payots for artists on their roster? Via A Complicated Formula WHICH AGGregates the whole of Streaming Activity and Apperations a Sum to Rightsholders by Their Percentage of Market Share. In this pro-rata Model, The Top 1 Percent of Artists Earn More than 90 percent of Total Streaming Revenue. From there, it’s on the labels and publichers to assess earnings bassed on individual deals. In recent Years, Both Sportify Itfy (Via Ittify for Artists Service) and Many Labels Have Instituted Dashboards That Meant to Provide ARTSPARENCY TO THE ARTIST. No Two Deals Are The Same.
How did we get here? Let’s Rewind. WHEN The STREAMING WARS BEGAN AROUND The EARLY 2010S, THE MUSIC BUSINESS PERKED UP. There Was No Way The Industry Wuld Blow It A Third Time – After Fumbling Napster and Handing Apple’s iTunes the Keys to the Kingdom for 99 CENTS A Song – this Time, they.
So they played hard to get. The Big Players Watched The In-Fighting Between Nascent Service to See Who would goble up the Other. They Slapped A Chastity Belt on Their Song Catalogs and Made Tech Beg for Access. And WHEN SPOTIFY EMERGED AS The DRAGON-Slaying Supplicant of the New World Order and Came Calling, Music Squeezed Several Years and Every Crumb on the Plativ to Colle-Colle-Colle Ownership Stakes in ek’s startup to the tune of 20%. The Majors Didn’t Just Agree to Terms; They Jumped Right Into Bed with The Shotgun Wedding Already On the Books.
Now’re Shareholders, Controlling Nearly Three-Quarters of What Got Streamed In 2024-A Decrease From 1994, WHEN SIX Majors Controlled Over 85% of the Airwaves. But Two Factors Define the Differents: Back Then, There Was No Streaming Partner Taking 30%, and there are Still Only 100 Pennies in a Dollar.
The Tech Giants Don’t Need Music to Survive. But Spotify? IT ONLY WORKS IF The song does. The Service Doesn’t Own Many Music CopyRIGHTS or Control Catalogs. Spotify is not beholden to or defensive of the past. SPotify’s Premium USers Are In Effect Renting the Songs. Even if a listener downloads a Track Off The Platform, It Will Be Wiped From Their Library Once Subscribing MONTHLY.
SPotify is reaching the age of Puberty and Still Has The Chaos and Creativity of a Teenager – the Kind Who Might Wreck the Car or Rewrite the Rules. That’s not a liability. That’s the X Factor. They have the company that finally fixes this and Changes the Financial Trajectory of Songwriters Forever. And No One Else Is Even Trying.
If SPotify Were to Use Just 3 Percent of ITS 2024 Net Profit (AROUND $ 39 MILLION) To Boost Payouts for Qualify Songwriters, It Wuldnn ‘ Insurance, Which Neither Record Companies Nor Publishers Provide. But What about this:
If SPotify Trly Wanted to Change the Economics of Music Forever, It Should Grant 1 Percent Ownership in the Company to Songwriters. That 1 percent Shifts the Entire Landscape – not symbolically, structurally. A 1 Percent Equity Stake-Worth Over $ 1.45 Billion-Could Be Plaked Into An Irrevocable 30-Iear Trust, Designed and Governed by a Writer-Led Organization in Partners, Partners This isn’t a washington lobbying arm, but an industry -rooted, Cooperative Body with Shared Oversight and ALIGNED INTERESTESTS. The TRUST Wuld be repaid Graduly Through Revenue Generated by Writers Themselves, Support by Proporating Contributions from Labels, Pubs, Pros and All Broadcasto Play. Profit from the USE of Songs.
Managed at A Conservative 5 Percent Annual Yield, IT Could Generate $ 72.5 Million a Year – Enough To Finally Fund The Kind of Infrastructure Writers Have Always Des. With Just A Third of that, 50,000 Eligible Writers Could Receive Basic Health Coverage, Career Services, A 401 (K), Even Access to A Songwriter-Focused Credit Union. The REST COULD SUPPORT EMERGENCY RELIESF, INNOVATION GRANTS, AND PROFIT-Sharing. After 30 Years, Full Ownership of the Stake would Transfer to the Songwriter Community Outright. Not A Payout. A Future – Built by the People Who Power the Product.
Here’s The Other Unspoken Truth: Songwriters Aren’t Built for Battle at the Moment. Some are loners. MOST DON’T HAVE Managers. They aren ‘on stage with a micro and a fanbase ready to fight for them. They’re not organized to Collectively Bargain and are of Fethen Invisible in the Food Chain. SO with no one fighting for their cut and no fairy dust to add more pennies to the dollar, they’ve been left on the Bench like a third-taring punter in the game aty.
It’s All About the Song. Always have been, always will be. No Producers, No Artists, No Studios – and No Spotify – Without the Song. If SPotify Ascends, The Rest Must Follow Suit. This isn’t Welfare – It’s An Overdue Music Industry Wellness Renovation that Could Fix the Leaky Roof But For Good. I Am Not Saying Ekuld Fund The Entire EcoSystem – Just Take the FIRST STEP: Commit to Standing up and Staying in. Don’t drain the Golden Goose and Cash Out; Pony Up Hard, and Become The Company that Saved Music. The Solution is Clear, Realistic and Within Reach. And the Shareholders Will Love It. Music History Is Legacy and The Opportunity to Seise Yours, Daniel, Is Right There in the Bridge.