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Spotify Turns 5 as Yorke Hits Out
Indie | Tuesday 8th October 2013 | Harry
Spotify recently celebrated five years in the public domain. It operates in thirty two countries and boasts over twenty four million users, six million of which pay to use the service.
Since its formation in 2008, one million years worth of music has been streamed and over one billion online playlists have been created. Online subscription services such as Spotify now constitute 13% of worldwide music sales.
But with fresh criticism coming from Thom Yorke and other high profile musicians, the company faces the toughest period of its short history so far.
Despite the company’s claims that in its half-decade span it has paid out five hundred million dollars to artists, members of Pink Floyd David Gilmore, Roger Waters and Nick Mason, released a statement criticising spotify’s royalties policy, stating that "Nearly 90% of the artists who get a cheque for digital play receive less than $5,000 a year’’.
In a revealing interview with the Guardian, classical musician Zoe Keating revealed that her material received 201,412 plays of Spotify and yet she received the equivalent of just 0.3 pence per play.
Thom Yorke’s criticism, voiced in an interview with Mexican website Sopitas, raised concerns over the destructive impact Spotify has on an industry in a precarious position. The Atom’s For Peace singer, who withdrew music from Spotify earlier this year, was quoted as saying ‘‘to me this isn't the mainstream, this is like the last fart, the last desperate fart of a dying corpse’’.
While Yorke’s concerns are shared by a number of influential artists, the emerging situation in the Scandinavian music scene may go some distance to entertain the prospect of hope for a sustainable music streaming culture.
While artist may feel short changed, Spotify does appear in Scandinavia at least, to have had acted as a deterrent against piracy and illegal acquisition of music and provided a boost to the Swedish music industry.
While the figures for sales generated by paying subscribers in the UK and US won’t be released until next year, recent figures from Scandanavia suggest that total music sales are on the up, with sales in Spotify’s home nation Sweden, rising by almost 14% in 2012 and 12% in 2013, with streamed music subscriptions making up 70% of total music sales.
Despite Thom Yorke’s concerns, these figures provided by the Swedish Recording Industry Association suggest that Spotify has the potential to hold an established position within music’s mainstream.
