A Little Knowledge... #42

Welcome to A Little Knowledge #42 – our free weekly LinkedIn newsletter.

?? BULLETIN NEWS – Spotify says its payout changes could be worth $1bn to artists

This week,?Spotify?officially announced its plans to change?the?way it calculates its streaming royalties, and claimed that they could drive “approximately an additional $1 billion in revenue toward emerging and professional artists over?the?next five years”.

• As leaked, there are three main changes, which will begin rolling out “in?the?new year” according to?Spotify’s blog post this week.
• First,?the?company will begin fining labels and distributors “per track when flagrant artificial streaming is detected on their content” by its systems. This is about cracking down on streaming fraud, which has been a hot topic for?the?music industry this year.
• Second, Spotify is setting a rule whereby tracks will only generate recorded royalties once they have been streamed at least 1,000 times in?the?previous 12 months.?The?company said that this will affect “tens of millions” of tracks in its 100m-strong catalogue.
• These tracks may only average $0.03 of royalties a month, but it adds up. “These small disregarded payments have added up to $40 million in 2022 alone,” claimed Spotify.
• It stressed that from?the?start of 2024, all this money will go into its royalty pool for music rightsholders to be shared among eligible tracks. “Spotify will not make additional money under this model.”
• Finally, Spotify is cracking down on what it describes as ‘functional’ music genres including “white noise, nature sounds, machine noises, sound effects, non-spoken ASMR, and silence recordings”.
• There's a lot to digest, and plenty of?repercussions to ponder –?read our full analysis here.

??? Music Ally archive:?Spotify

???COUNTRY PROFILE - Ireland's remarkable growth set to continue

Country?Profiles?are?one of our most popular and data- and insight-rich resources. Our reports are based on speaking to?the?people on?the?ground, and are packed with info you need to know. Ireland’s recorded music industry looks set to continue its remarkable growth, although a slowdown may be coming.

The Irish music industry is on track for its 10th successive year of growth in 2023:

• That's thanks to physical music sales and the continued rise of streaming, although there are some signs that subscription streaming may be close to a plateau.
• Patrick Hughes, general Manager - Ireland at Sony Music Entertainment, says that album streams in Ireland are up 13%, year-to-date, in 2023, with singles streaming up 12%, while the physical music market value is up 9%.
• “There is increased time spent on streaming services across the board, with music fans listening to even more music,” he explains.
• “Catalogue has seen a huge increase in streams, especially with TikTok – fans are discovering more music than ever before.”

???Music Ally subscribers can?read?the?country profile in full?here,?and?the?Mexico page, which collects all Mexico-focused news in one place,?is accessible to everyone.

?? MUSIC ALLY JOBS

The latest and best jobs for the global music business, trusted by both top music industry companies and experienced professionals on top of their game.

Are you looking for a job? Click here to see the full list of vacancies!

?? A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA...

And finally… our daily Bulletin newsletter is loved by subscribers for its instant industry analysis - but secretly, the part they like most is the ‘A Little Something Extra’ section at the bottom of the email. Here's a few of the best recent links:

• K-Pop, virtual artists and more.?Check out the opening ceremony?to League of Legends' 2023 'Worlds' world championship.
• The first?AI-generated Angry Person In A Newspaper?has been spotted.
• This Hello Kitty?power socket adapter?is... sorta-cute, sorta-horrific.

This is only a glimpse into this week's The Knowledge newsletter – subscribe for FREE?and every Friday it’ll arrive in your inbox with:

?? Exclusive access to selected courses in our LEARNING HUB; ????The best new platforms in TOOLS;??? Highlights from our latest COUNTRY PROFILE REPORTS; ?? ???Some great and/or strange music in SOMETHING 4 THE WEEKEND; ?? A look back in TIME MACHINE; ?? The Music Ally Focus PODCAST; and????more links to our favourite unusual stuff in A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA.