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Parody singer 'Weird Al' Yankovic trolled Spotify's notorious shortchanging of artists with a hilarious message for fans through Spotify Wrapped, the annual end-of-the-year tally of the most-streamed artists.
The music platform pays music artists approximately between $0.003 - $0.005 per stream on average, which works out to be about a 70/30 revenue split–with 70% going to rights holders and 30% to Spotify.
However, starting early next year, Spotify will institute a new royalty system policy in which artists won't receive payouts until a song reaches 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months.
Following Spotify's policy change announcement that further inconveniences artists, especially emerging musical talent, the "Eat It" singer told fans in a video message:
"I just wanna thank you all for your amazing support."
"It's my understanding that I had over 80 million streams on Spotify this year."
"So if I’m doing the math right, that means I earned $12."
He added:
“So, you know, enough to get myself a nice sandwich at a restaurant. So, from the bottom of my heart, thanks for your support and, uh...thanks for the sandwich."
You can see the clip that was shared on X (formerly Twitter) here.
The legend Weird Al criticizing what Spotify pays artists in the video he made FOR Spotify. \ud83d\udc10\ud83d\udc10\ud83d\udc10— (@)
Yankovic's post elicited chuckles despite the concerns about music industry issues.
@rayfp It\u2019s hilarious to hear him say this because it\u2019s utterly absurd. Yea artists should be paid more for streaming. No doubt. On average Spotify pays me (lowly 30 listeners a month dude) like .006189691413 cents per stream. At 80 million streams that\u2019s almost $500k in earnings. \ud83d\udc4d— (@)
Spotify explained that the new royalty policy update will "eliminate one strategy used to attempt to game the system or hide artificial streaming, as uploaders will no longer be able to generate pennies from an extremely high volume of tracks."
They explained:
"It’s more impactful for these tens of millions of dollars per year to increase payments to those most dependent on streaming revenue—rather than being spread out in tiny payments that typically don’t even reach an artist (as they do not surpass distributors’ minimum payout thresholds)."
"99.5% of all streams are of tracks that have at least 1,000 annual streams, and each of those tracks will earn more under this policy."
Spotify assured that they would "not make additional money under this model" and that there is "no change to the size of the music royalty pool being paid out to rights holders from Spotify."
They added of the new modernization of the royalty system:
"We will simply use the tens of millions of dollars annually to increase the payments to all eligible tracks, rather than spreading it out into $0.03 payments."
Let's hope this is an actual win for artists and not just lip service.
In the meantime, enjoy that sandwich, Weird Al!