How Spotify Diverted $47 Million

of Indie Artists’ Royalties

On Today's TAXI TV

7pm Eastern (EDT) / 6pm Central (CDT) / 4pm Pacific (PDT) 12am London (BST) / 9am Sydney (AEST)

Dear Songwriters, Artists, Producers, and Composers,  

A year ago, Spotify decided they weren’t going to pay royalties on tracks that streamed less than 1,000 times. Instead, those royalties would go to other artists proportionately to their streaming totals.   

Our friend Tony van Veen, CEO of Disc Makers, recently calculated that in 2024 alone, this resulted in $47 million in independent artist royalties being diverted to (mostly) the majors! He went public with this data, Spotify actually responded, and Tony put them in their place.   

I’m excited that Tony will be our guest on Monday’s TAXI TV. We’ve been close friends for at least 25 years, and he’s one of the smartest business people I know. He’s also a true champion of indie musicians! 

Tony and I will be discussing his findings – and whether there’s anything artists can do about it.

We’ll be touching on topics like:

•   How many Spotify tracks did not monetize last year? (It’s a whopper of a number!)

•   How did he calculate the $47 Million in lost streaming royalties?

•   Where did those diverted royalties go?

•   What do you, the independent artist, do about this?

•   Why the 3 big digital distributors have been mum about this inequity

•   Who Tony thinks is really behind all this (spoiler alert: it’s not Spotify)

For some reason, Tony has been the only one I’m aware of to stand up against Spotify and to speak up for independent artists. And, as we all know, it’s hard enough to get people to listen to your music on Spotify. It’s even sadder that people with under 1,000 streams aren’t getting paid!

I hope you’ll join us for what promises to be a lively TAXI TV episode!

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7pm Eastern (EDT) / 6pm Central (CDT) / 4pm Pacific (PDT) 12am London (BST) / 9am Sydney (AEST)

See you on the show,
Michael