Bruno Crolot managed the International Record and Music Publishing Market (Midem) between 2010 and 2015. Now director of international music at Spotify, leader in music streaming, he returns to two themes that mobilize music professionals. music at Midem 2024, which is being held in Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes) until Saturday January 27: artists’ remuneration and artificial intelligence.
A small number of artists capture the majority of revenue generated by streaming. To better pay musicians and singers, should platforms change their economic model?
Income is becoming more and more important. More and more artists are being offered, thanks to streaming, the opportunity to develop an international audience. The genres listened to are more numerous, unlike the CD years, where large groups and international artists occupied a dominant position in the charts. More than 200,000 artists distributed by Spotify generate significant revenue. This number is increasing. We see that a middle class of artists is developing.
It is therefore clear that the question of the distribution of this value arises. It is legitimate. If only because we are talking about an economic model that was put in place around fifteen years ago. It is healthy to look at what basis the music sector is working on to ensure that we are moving in the right direction. Our mission is to give as many artists as possible the opportunity to generate satisfactory income from their work.
How do you go about paying artists better at Spotify?
We have announced changes in our method of distributing royalties. All the analyzes we have been able to do show that music titles that have less than 1,000 streams per year generate a few cents per month. However, these cents, which represent significant sums at the global level, are not returned to artists, due to costs linked to distributors and labels. We therefore decided to no longer donate royalties to titles that have fewer than 1,000 streams per year.
We also want to combat fraudulent streams. Some labels or distributors try to use this system to generate income. From a certain proportion of fraudulent streams, we will apply penalties to them. On the other hand, some creators multiply titles by thirty-one seconds so that the number of streams is artificially increased. From this year, the titles of white noise (or white noise) will only be paid for after two minutes. These three measures should allow us to allocate 1 billion euros in revenue to artists trying to make a career in music.
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