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.