‘Putting a number on art’: musicians nervous as Spotify announces royalty changes

Streaming giant says tweaks will bring more revenue to artists and away from fraudsters, but some musicians are worried about further creeping change

Spotify has confirmed there will be long-rumoured changes to their royalty payments from early 2024, which include a controversial policy requiring tracks to get a minimum of 1,000 listens every year to receive royalties.

Certain styles of “noise” tracks such as white noise and sleep sounds must now be at least two minutes long, and Spotify will levy a new fee on labels or distributors who they deem to be generating artificial streams – where bots or click-farms are used to fraudulently inflate an artist’s streaming figures, and siphon off royalty payments from Spotify.