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Songwriters Hold A Peaceful Protest Against Spotify Royalty Rates In Los Angeles

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Yesterday, Spotify’s old West Hollywood office was crowded with songwriters advocating for better pay, according to a Billboard reporter. Tiffany Red was the event organizer, a professional songwriter with clients like Jennifer Hudson and Jason Derulo. She founded The 100 Percenters, who stated on their website that the mission was to host “a peaceful protest in Los Angeles in support of better royalty rates for music creators from Spotify and other streaming platforms.” With picket signs, they demanded one cent per stream.

Protesters brought up the fact that Spotify gave notorious podcaster Joe Rogan a $200 million deal despite his repeated behavior of spewing misinformation and saying the N-word: “They tell us they can’t pay us more and then they go and give a podcaster that much money?” artist and songwriter Bianca “Blush” Atterberry said. They pointed out that Spotify is worth $67 billion. The protest, though, is a part of the group’s larger goal to get all streaming services to pay better including Apple Music, Amazon, and Pandora.

Meanwhile, UK indie group The Pocket Gods recently protested Spotify’s royalty rates for artists with 1000X30 – Nobody Makes Money Anymore, an album that consisted of 1,000 songs that all run for about 30 seconds. Bandleader Mark Christopher Lee noted his band earns about £0.002 (about a quarter of a US cent) from each Spotify stream of their songs.

Spotify Is Changing A Big Rule Thanks To A Protest Album Of 1,000 30-Second Songs

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UK indie group The Pocket Gods decided to protest Spotify’s royalty rates for artists with 1000X30 – Nobody Makes Money Anymore, an album that, as the title indicates, consists of 1,000 songs that all run for about 30 seconds. Spotify actually caught wind of the project and have since changed some part of how they do things.

Pocket Gods leader Mark Christopher Lee was inspired to take on the project by a 2015 article from The Independent, which ponders the future of music given that royalties are paid on a Spotify stream after a track has been played for at least 30 seconds.

“I saw the article and it made me think, ‘Why write longer songs when we get paid little enough for just 30 seconds,” Lee told i News. He continued, “We wrote and recorded 1,000 songs, each a shade over 30 seconds long for the album. The longest is 36 seconds. It is designed to raise awareness about the campaign for fair royalty rates.”

He also noted his band earns about £0.002 (about a quarter of a US cent) from each Spotify stream of their songs.

The project was first presented earlier this month and Spotify has been paying attention, as Lee now says he was invited to meet with Spotify’s head of artist relations. He said that since the release of the album, the streaming platform has changed one of its rules: “Spotify said we’re ahead of the curve as shorter songs are the future — just look at TikTok. They said that I can pitch 30-second tracks to their playlists for consideration — I wasn’t able to do this previously as the songs were considered too short. So next week I’m releasing a 30-second single called ‘Noel Gallagher Is Jealous Of My Studio.’”

Lee says he was also told songwriters would see increased pay rates when Spotify rolls out an increase in its subscription price.

Hot Press notes The Pocket Gods are used to dropping atypical sorts of albums like this: They’ve released 74 albums since 1998, multiple of which have over 100 tracks.

Kendrick Lamar Will Be Breaking Down ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ In A New Podcast

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Kendrick Lamar had a huge weekend at the Super Bowl, crushing it an all-timer halftime show performance with Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, and Eminem. And while Kendrick didn’t debut the mythical new single on Sunday that we’ve all been waiting for, he did just announce a new podcast today about To Pimp A Butterfly, debuting tomorrow on Spotify.

In the second season of Spotify’s The Big Hit Show, Kendrick will be the focus of the five-part series that takes a look at the creation of the groundbreaking collision of hip-hop and jazz. “Going back into the album it was me explaining my experiences and what emotions it brought up from that experience,” he said in a trailer for the new show. “And tell them like, ‘Yo, it’s something bigger than Compton and where we from.’”

The show is hosted by music journalist Alex Pappademas and the first season was all about the Twilight saga. If that sounds a bit off the hip-hop spectrum, it’s because the podcast is an all-encompassing look at pop culture that dubs itself “an epic journey that spans genres, mediums, and generations to explore what happens when a wildly successful piece of pop culture gets so big that it changes the world. This show is about how big hits get dreamed up, how they get made, and what happens when we make them our own.”

It’s rare to have Lamar actually be a part of interviews and media about himself. Even arguably the definitive look at Lamar, journalist Marcus J. Moore’s excellent book, The Butterfly Effect, was an unofficial biography that didn’t feature an interview with the star. The Big Hit Show on TPAB will have Lamar front and center, as well as guests like George Clinton, Rapsody, and more.

The show debuts on Wednesday, 02/16 for free on Spotify, and you can stream it here.

Why Are People Leaving Spotify?

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This past January 24th, legendary musician Neil Young wrote an open letter threatening to remove his entire catalog from Spotify if the streaming service did not remove Joe Rogan and his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, from the platform. Young cited how Rogan continuously spreads COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on his show. “Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” he said.“They can have [Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both.” This was the first domino to tip and quite a bit has happened since.

Why Are People Leaving Spotify? Inside The Controversy

Soon after Young’s statement, Spotify sided with Joe Rogan, their $100 million man who signed a very rich exclusive licensing deal in 2020. Young’s music was removed, but other artists began to follow his lead. Joni Mitchell joined Young in removing her music, then the rest of Young’s Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young bandmates announced that they were pulling their music as well. This led to numerous artists beginning to question their relationship with Spotify — who already pays artists a criminally low amount of money per song play — and then India.Arie took an even deeper stand against Rogan and Spotify. Arie announced that she was removing her catalog and her podcast, Songversation, citing not necessarily Rogan’s vaccine misinformation as the reason, but rather his problematic language around issues of race. “Neil Young opened a door that I MUST Walk Through,” she posted on Instagram. Rogan soon issued an apology for his misinformation and later for his language.

Arie later posted a video showing numerous instances of Rogan using the n-word on his show, called for a full-on Boycott, and Spotify, in turn, removed 70 episodes of the podcast from the streaming service. But why this issue isn’t going away anytime soon, and why people will likely continue to leave Spotify, is because of the platform’s tepid measures taken. A “content advisory” warning has been added to the platform and CEO Daniel Ek wrote a letter to all employees, which felt a bit more like damage control and a potential PR play.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.