Songwriter Of The Yr nominees are boycotting Spotify’s Grammy social gathering

The nominees for the Songwriter Of The Yr class at this yr’s Grammy Awards have determined to boycott Spotify‘s social gathering for the ceremony.

The likes of Jessi Alexander, Amy Allen, Jessie Jo Dillon and RAYE – who’ve all been nominated for Songwriter Of The Yr have introduced they are going to be skipping the streaming platform’s celebratory bash and also will not be performing on the occasion.

Whereas talking to Billboard, Allen (Harry Types, Niall Horan, Sabrina Carpenter) and Dillon (Jelly Roll, Megan Marooney) confirmed that their absence is because of Spotify’s remedy of songwriters.

“After some thought, I couldn’t in good conscience help this initiative given their strategy to bundling royalties,” mentioned Dillon in a press release to the publication. “It is vitally good to be individually honored, however it’s higher for me and my whole songwriter neighborhood to be paid pretty for our artwork. There aren’t any songs with out songwriters.”

A consultant for RAYE advised the publication that she had by no means dedicated to attending or performing on the occasion, so “there’s nothing for her to again out of at current,” and added that RAYE has been “an outspoken advocate on behalf of songwriters’ rights igniting an industry-wide dialogue on the subject.”

Final yr, it was reported that Spotify had reduce the royalty charges for songwriters and publishers, resulting in an estimated $150 million lower in royalty funds.

The announcement of the boycott comes after figures throughout the {industry} have expressed their dissatisfaction with the streaming platform.

Again in July, Spotify revealed that it has topped expectations with its earnings and variety of premium subscribers this quarter.

Within the report, Spotify revealed that it had a Q2 income of €3.81billion (£3.2b) – a rise by 20 per cent for the reason that final quarter – and a web revenue of €274million (£230m), versus a lack of €302million (£253m) the yr prior.

It additionally shared that working prices had decreased by 16 per cent, and the gross margin for the interval was forward of expectations, coming in at 29.2 per cent in comparison with 2023’s 24.1 per cent.

The earnings have been almost definitely aided by the streaming service elevating costs for many of its present plans in early June 2024. Additionally, Spotify’s resolution to chop down 17 per cent of its workforce with a view to save prices on the finish of 2023 in all probability additionally contributed to their earnings rising. This resolution got here after an earlier plan was applied to put off one other six per cent of its employees at the beginning of 2023 in a bid to advertise “pace”.

Along with worth hikes and employees lay-offs, it’s possible that the earnings additionally benefited from the streaming service formally demonetising all songs on the platform with fewer than 1,000 streams.

The coverage was launched on April 1, however had been deliberate by the platform for a while. It was rapidly criticised for making it tougher for artists to generate royalties from their music and proscribing new artists seeking to crack the music {industry}.

Kate Nash lately highlighted low streaming royalties in her “bum on the again of a fireplace truck” protest, the place she headed to the London workplace of Spotify and mentioned, by way of megaphone: “Artists are paid 0.003 of a penny per stream while [Spotify] demonetised 80 per cent of music on the platform. The shareholders cashed out over 419 million between them.”

Just lately, a web site parodying Spotify Wrapped was taken down on the request of Spotify‘s authorized group. Titled ‘Spotify Unwrapped‘, the positioning highlighted the low pay artists obtain from the platform.

‘Unwrapped’ calculated the quantity customers pay in subscription charges, vs the the royalties paid to the artists they’ve listened to all year long. They intention to name the corporate out for “its predatory remedy of artists”, per the web site.

Advantages criticised bands and artists sharing Spotify Wrapped graphics after complaining concerning the firm “destroying” the {industry} for the remainder of the yr.

“I don’t perceive how one can help stuff like Kate Nash’s current protest after which be placing wrapped graphics on each nook of your socials,” they wrote.

Primal Scream bassist Simone Marie Butler additionally spoke out towards the platform, referencing CEO Daniel Ek. She wrote that he’s “sitting on his yacht laughing at your spotify high 5 whereas he cashes in on music he had nothing to do with, calls it ‘content material’ and artists nonetheless get £0.04 per stream . For brand spanking new bands the primary 1000 streams are nonetheless demonetized.”

Elsewhere, Spotify CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek additionally got here beneath controversy earlier this yr after talking about the price of “creating content material”, when referring to music.

Ek implied that it’s simpler and extra reasonably priced than ever to create “content material” because of trendy expertise. “At the moment, with the price of creating content material being near zero, individuals can share an unimaginable quantity of content material. This has sparked my curiosity concerning the idea of lengthy shelf life versus brief shelf life,” he wrote.

It sparked outrage from artists together with Deadmau5, who mentioned he thought of eradicating his music from the platform in response, and Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante who added that Spotify is “the place music goes to die”.

Ek later walked again on his feedback, explaining in an apology that he had no intention of dismissing the struggles confronted by musicians and utilizing the “reductive” label of “content material”, and as a substitute “was most fascinated about exploring was how, on this atmosphere of fixed creation, we are able to establish and be certain that the daring, thrilling, world-changing concepts and items of artwork don’t get misplaced within the noise.”