Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Spotify Royalties Overtake iTunes In Europe

Many high profile artists are railing against the royalty payments provided by Spotify, but it's paying out more and more money every day. In fact, the streaming service has now overtaken iTunes as far as royalty revenue in Europe, according to Kobalt, a company that helps collect music royalties on behalf of artists.

Kobalt has a number of big artists in its stable, including Maroon 5, Lenny Kravit, Dave Grohl, Max Martin, Bob Dylan and many more. The company reports that revenue from Spotify streams were 13% higher than from iTunes last quarter, but it only collects for its artist in Europe.

What's interesting is how fast this has flipped. It was only a year ago that Kobalt found iTunes earnings were 32% higher than Spotify.

People can deny that streaming isn't gaining traction or isn't paying, but the facts say that's definitely not true.

The problem is that many artists aren't seeing these new revenues mostly because of the deals they've struck with their record labels. Labels have always been good at siphoning off money from artist royalties, and even though we're now in the digital age, it seems just as difficult as ever to track.

That said, streaming is coming on strong, and soon it will mean more money for all involved. How much more remains to be seen.

Kobalt iTunes and Spotify income

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What about Q2 & Q3? Why rely on old numbers?

haigek said...

Percentages of what? What's happening to the total pie?

haigek said...

Why percentages? What about the total pie?

blueskiwi said...

Even in the original source it's not very clear what that graph actually shows:
http://www.kobaltmusic.com/page-news-detail.php?id=WN3361

It seems to be a graph of what percentage of artists' income comes from each source. So it's entirely possible that artists' actual income is shrinking as Spotify displaces iTunes.

There is nothing in these badly presented figures to suggest that "soon it will mean more money for all involved".

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