Musicians Union put pressure on Spotify for better royalties deal

The Musicians’ Union have placed demands for Spotify to draw up a new pay deal for the artists.

The 30,000+ strong Musicians’ Union gain just 0.4p per play on Spotify, generating just £4,000 for 1 million plays. Whereas artists receive a sum of £59.73 for a 3-minute track played on Radio 2.

General Secretary of the Musicians’ Union, John Smith told The Guardian:

“The argument that has kicked off this week is absolutely right and it really is hard, particularly for emerging artists, to make a decent amount of money. The streaming model should be able to work to the benefit of performers. We’d like to see a realignment of the intellectual property rights that govern all this in order to be fairer to artists.”

This follows Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich’s recent criticism of the music-streaming platform, going as far as removing large amounts of their back-catalogue from the service.

[via The Guardian]