- Music
- 02 Dec 21
Noname among artists criticising Spotify's payments to artists - Services' annual Wrapped feature launches yesterday
"If you really wanna celebrate your favourite artist tell Spotify to pay us," Noname tweeted.
The American rapper Noname behind acclaimed releases such as Telefone and Room 25 took to Twitter yesterday to criticise Spotify on the day its annual Wrapped feature was sent out to users.
Fatimah Nyeema Warner pointed out that the average payout to an artist for one stream of their songs was $0.004, less than a cent.
"Fans love wrapped because it's a way to celebrate their favorite artists. Artists love wrapped because it's nice to see yearly analytics and love from fans. Meanwhile 'Spotify pays less than a cent: an average payout of $0.004 per stream'," she tweeted.
"If you really wanna celebrate your favourite artist tell Spotify to pay us. Trust me, they're literally hoarding the profits from our streams. they don't need y'all doing free advertising for them too."
According to producerhive.com, it's currently estimated that Spotify pays among the lowest rates to artists per stream of the primary streaming services, with only Amazon Music and YouTube Music offering less.
Tidal and Apple Music are among the higher paying comapnies, with Tidal giving $0.01284 per stream. However, these figures are all before labels and distributors take their potential cut of an artist's earnings.
Spotify drew further controversy earlier this month when its CEO Daniel EK invested over €100 million in the military tech company Helsing.
Ek has also been criticised for publicly attempting to buy the English Premier League club Arsenal while under fire for Spotify's low payments to artists.
