Spotify has made a change to its service offering that whilst seeming innocuous, has serious implications for songwriters. The signup page now has an important note regarding their entry level membership tier: “If you cancel your Basic plan, it’s not possible to resubscribe to it”.
The first reason this matters for songwriters is that Spotify Basic plans do not include monthly audiobook listening time. This may sound irrelevant if we’re only interested in the music, but the second reason changes that assumption.
When Spotify bundles music together with non-music products or services in a single subscription, it considers this a “bundled plan” and will only pay a pro-rata royalty on the music part. The user need never once listen to a single bundled audio book for this to take effect. The impact is devastating for songwriters. When this policy began 18 months ago, it immediately created a 44% drop in mechanical royalties paid to music creators.
Digital Music News estimated that Spotify Premium bundled plans currently account for 99% of their market. The sunsetting of basic plans might see this rise to 100% soon. This laser focus on extracting every last penny from music creators has become a Spotify trait. And whilst it’s existentially depressing for songwriters, many other music distributors and GenAI corporations see it as the gold standard of commercial efficiency.
There are two calls to action from this news to consider.
If you’re a Spotify subscriber, you may wish to vote with your wallet and move to another platform that values and pays music creators fractionally better. Today that might mean Qobuz, Tidal or Apple Music; all of which also offer well designed apps and lossless streaming.
And regardless of which platform you use today, consider supporting the music ecosystem in other more direct ways. Buy physical music products, go to gigs, purchase from artists’ own websites and share independent music recommendations with friends. It won’t undo the damage, but at this point, every little helps.
