A new artist-focused campaign has been launched in the US by the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers that aims to redress what it sees as an imbalance in the royalties paid out by streaming companies.
The campaign is called “Justice at Spotify” and it targets the world’s most prominent music streaming platform with a set of demands. There are intended to encourage the streaming organisation to deliver increase royalty payments and add transparency in its practices.
The list of demands includes:
- Pay us at least one cent per stream
- Adopt a user-centric payment model
- Make all closed-door contracts public
- Reveal existing payola, then end it altogether
- Credit all labor in recordings
- End legal battles intended to further impoverish artists
“One of Spotify’s core goals is to give ‘a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art.’ Yet, to generate a single dollar on the platform, a song needs to be streamed 263 times,” states the campaign website.
“To put that in perspective, it would take 786 streams to generate enough revenue to buy an average cup of coffee. To pay the median American monthly rent ($1,078) an artist needs to generate 283,684 recurring streams monthly. And to earn $15/hr each month working full time, it would take 657,895 streams per band member.”
Learn more at www.unionofmusicians.org/justice-at-spotify
(This article was written for and originally published at Fair Trade Music International.)
(Photo ©UMAW)
