The biggest music industry news | October 2023 roundup
Image credit: Adrian Korte
A look back at the most notable music news of the last the last month, including Spotify and Deezer’s moves to change how music is paid.
Artists can get ready for Spotify Wrapped
Spotify Wrapped is like Christmas come early for music lovers. Spotify have found their year-in-review summaries to be a major cultural event and has driven growth in engagement and merch sales.
To make this year’s Wrapped even bigger and better for listeners and artists alike, Spotify have added a bunch of new ways artists can interact with their top fans through their Wrapped. It includes a personal video thanking them for their dedication and an exclusive merch discount to encourage sales.
Spotify look to change how they pay out streaming royalties
Spotify have been in talks with labels and stakeholders to adjust how they pay. They claim that they want to “combat drains on the royalty pool”.
To do this they aim to change the payment threshold for non-musical “noise” tracks, which currently applies after 30 seconds of listening to any track on Spotify. In a major move, Spotify also announced that they will withhold payments on music until it has reached a particular number of streams.
Finally, they claim that they will begin fining labels and distributors for fraudulent activity on songs. Nothing has been set in stone and we wait to see full confirmation from Spotify as to their plans, which are expected to be put in place Q1 2024.
Deezer introduce their artist centric streaming model
In a similar move, Deezer have announced their look towards a new way to pay royalties out. They even went so far as to launch their new artist centric streaming model in partnership with UMG earlier this month.
Deezer’s model isn’t quite the same, though it also looks to remove the royalties that go to non-music noise tracks. They want to boost the earnings of legitimate artists. Deezer will now be rewarding UMG artists who garner streams from natural engagement rather than algorithmic streams.
They will also be boosting revenues for artists who earn over 1000 streams from more than 500 unique listeners.
Q3 streaming reports
The year’s not quite up, but it’s looking good for music! Both Spotify and Deezer have released their reports for the third quarter of 2023. Both services are showing good growth in new listeners and, more importantly, paying subscribers.
TikTok expands music streaming service
TikTok Music has expanded to 3 more countries. The music streaming service launched by the short-form video service is now available in 5 countries globally. They’re also expanding the service with new features powered by AI.
Musicians fight to protect their rights against AI
The discussion over AIs place in the music industry has heated up in the US in recent months. Multiple organisations have approached the government for legislation that protects the rights of songwriters and human artists.
They’ve even seen progress, with senators pushing the No Fakes Act. The proposed bill looks at introducing repercussions for the reproduction of a person’s image and voice without consent.
Spotify add Audiobooks to Premium
Spotify Premium just got better with free access to audiobooks. Premium users can now listen to up to 15 hours of audiobooks a month on over 150,000 of the audiobooks available on their platform.
Unfortunately, users on a shared membership like Duo and Family can’t make use of the free listens unless they’re the user in charge of the account.
Keep track of all the biggest music news on the RouteNote blog, updated daily.