Latest / The imuRgency Room / So… Who Actually Gets Paid When You Hit Play? (with Spotify's Sam Duboff)

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So… Who Actually Gets Paid When You Hit Play? (with Spotify's Sam Duboff) · The imuRgency Room

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to the Emergency Room Podcast.
• 0:03
  We are here in a slightly different set.
• 0:05
  We're actually here based in Austin, TX for South by
• 0:08
  Southwest. I'm here with Spotify, and today
• 0:11
  we have a very special guest to talk to us about all things
• 0:14
  artist compensation, artist marketing, and, you know, some
• 0:18
  of your burning questions around Spotify, artists, AI,
• 0:22
  everything. So yeah, super excited for
• 0:25
  today's episode and super excited to introduce to you our
• 0:28
  lovely guest, Sam Dubov. Hi there.
• 0:32
  So happy to be here. It's so great to have you.
• 0:34
  We've been, I'm sure you've been having a packed time.
• 0:37
  And South by Southwest it's also.
• 0:38
  Yeah, of course. I'm on day three.
• 0:41
  I've got my energy up for this. But you know, it's, it's
• 0:43
  exhausting. How long you been in Like the
• 0:45
  South by Southwest mode? I got here like 3 nights ago,
• 0:50
  saw some amazing music. Last night I saw a band called
• 0:54
  the Sophs. SOPHS What kind of music?
• 0:57
  It was kind of like indie rock and their first album came out
• 1:02
  like 2 days ago they said and they were performing 9 times in
• 1:06
  three days and the one I saw last night late night was their
• 1:09
  third show of the day and they were incredible.
• 1:12
  So I wanted to give them a shout out because I can't even imagine
• 1:15
  your first album coming. 9 shows in three days and I thought it
• 1:18
  was so good. They're going through like the K
• 1:20
  pop ritual of like debuting because that's crazy.
• 1:23
  Yeah, I've never heard of that. That's why I I got to bed late
• 1:26
  last night because I was at that show, which was great.
• 1:28
  But this is an energizing and inspiring to be here.
• 1:32
  I am so happy to have you here. Just to give a little background
• 1:37
  on yourself and your role at Spotify.
• 1:40
  Could you tell the audience a little bit about what you do and
• 1:42
  what you do to Spotify? Of course, I've been at Spotify
• 1:45
  a little over 7 years. I lead the marketing and policy
• 1:48
  teams for the music business, so my team works on everything we
• 1:55
  offer to artists, songwriters, producers, labels, managers,
• 1:59
  tools that help them grow, helping them get the most out of
• 2:01
  Spotify, and then a lot of education.
• 2:04
  The music industry is famously complicated for sure.
• 2:07
  We produce a lot of resources that help artists and
• 2:11
  songwriters especially understand how the music
• 2:14
  industry works. How to get more out of Spotify?
• 2:16
  I love that because I think there is just so much
• 2:19
  information and also misinformation around like the
• 2:22
  music industry, everything that goes into it.
• 2:24
  So it's nice that there's actually people on the back end
• 2:28
  trying to combat some of that. Yeah, last week we released Loud
• 2:35
  and Clear, which is our annual royalty report, and people
• 2:40
  should go check it out. If you Google, you know,
• 2:42
  Spotify, loud and clear. But yeah, to the point of
• 2:46
  getting to meet humans behind it, the report hopefully is
• 2:48
  great. You know, we transparently
• 2:50
  publish exactly how much we're paying out, how many artists are
• 2:53
  making $1000 a year up to $10 million a year.
• 2:56
  You know, every level between no other streaming service does
• 2:59
  anything like that but us. But the data is just data.
• 3:04
  And so we really try to have like face to face conversations
• 3:06
  as much as we can because these are topics Spotify is happy to
• 3:10
  talk about. Think people think we like don't
• 3:12
  want to talk about artist pay and royalties and how it works.
• 3:15
  We really do. So conversations like this are
• 3:17
  part of our effort to just like, showcase the humans behind
• 3:20
  Spotify and get into the weeds and the details more about the
• 3:25
  streaming economy and how Spotify works for sure.
• 3:27
  Because I feel like there's always so much conversation
• 3:29
  around like what artist compensation is looking like in
• 3:33
  the world of streaming. Like it's so different from how
• 3:35
  like artists made money back before when you had like radio
• 3:38
  play, you were selling CDs and like banking on that.
• 3:40
  So it's just interesting. And also really inspiring to see
• 3:44
  that y'all are taking that front step.
• 3:47
  Yeah, thanks. This is a special loud and clear
• 3:50
  year because it's Spotify's 20th birthday.
• 3:53
  We found it 20 years ago. So we share all the year over
• 3:57
  year growth numbers like we always do.
• 3:59
  But we thought it was a good chance to to take a step back
• 4:02
  and think about the music industry 20 years ago, 25 years
• 4:05
  ago, first today, Spotify was, you know, founded probably and
• 4:11
  missed the hardest time in the history of the music industry.
• 4:13
  Piracy completely destroyed the industry, right?
• 4:17
  Like, I think for like younger listeners, you might have missed
• 4:20
  this era where there's like a three to four year period where
• 4:23
  the music industry was cratering.
• 4:25
  Everyone was illegally downloading music because with
• 4:28
  the Internet, you wanted to be able to listen to any song you
• 4:30
  want to at any time. And Spotify was founded inspire
• 4:34
  people to start paying for music again.
• 4:36
  You know, around nearly 70% of the money we make for music goes
• 4:40
  back to artists, songwriters in the music industry.
• 4:42
  And so the mission of Spotify for 20 years has been OK when
• 4:47
  piracy is an option to people. How do we make something so good
• 4:51
  that you'd rather pay for it because you're getting that much
• 4:53
  value out of it? You know, in 2014, about 10
• 4:57
  years ago, we were paying out a billion dollars a year.
• 5:00
  And when the payouts were, you know, that small, a billion
• 5:04
  sounds like a lot, right? For all artists, that's not a
• 5:07
  ton. There's lots of really good
• 5:08
  questions about, you know, could Spotify pay artists enough?
• 5:12
  Like only a billion dollars a year to go around isn't enough.
• 5:17
  And in the last decade we've 10X our payouts.
• 5:20
  So last year we paid out over $11 billion to the industry.
• 5:24
  It's the most any companies paid out to the music industry in one
• 5:27
  year in history. 50% of that went to Indies, indie artist
• 5:32
  labels, and our growth year over year was 10% when the rest of
• 5:36
  the industry is growing about 4%.
• 5:38
  And so this year especially we tried to take that, you know, 20
• 5:41
  year view of the industry of the past where superstars did really
• 5:45
  well. If you are from the US and
• 5:47
  Western Europe and you sang in English, right?
• 5:50
  Because it was really hard to get noticed in the CD era to now
• 5:53
  this kind of thriving global network of artists where, you
• 5:58
  know, 85% of the artists who are making $100,000 or more a year
• 6:04
  on Spotify are from outside the US.
• 6:06
  Wow, that's insane. Songs in 16 different languages
• 6:08
  reached the global top 50 charts.
• 6:11
  This is a fundamentally different music industry than
• 6:14
  1020 years ago where, you know, to make it, you kind of had to
• 6:18
  be from the US or Western Europe.
• 6:20
  You had to sing in English. There was maybe a few exceptions
• 6:23
  of people who overcame those obstacles.
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  And now it's really just this kind of global, vibrant artist
• 6:30
  ecosystem. No, for sure.
• 6:31
  I think we see that so often with like the acts that are
• 6:35
  blowing up right now. You have artists from all over
• 6:37
  the world. You just had like Bad Bunny do
• 6:39
  the Super Bowl performance all in Spanish.
• 6:41
  How amazing is that? Was phenomenal and unheard of.
• 6:44
  Like that was the first Super Bowl performance done completely
• 6:47
  not in English. Yeah, like music is just really
• 6:49
  evolving, right? Yeah, instead of like waiting to
• 6:51
  see what a DJ is gonna play for you on your local radio
• 6:54
  stations. Then if you hear Bad Bunny is
• 6:56
  amazing, and we all do hear that because he is, you can just open
• 7:00
  Spotify and go explore a whole new genre of music you never
• 7:03
  could before, for sure. And then, yeah, you see that in
• 7:06
  culture with, you know, things like Bad Bunny and the the
• 7:08
  halftime show, how it was amazing.
• 7:10
  It was amazing. There was a question we for
• 7:14
  clarity's sake, we met yesterday at a loud and clear pre briefing
• 7:19
  and there was a little Q&A at the end there.
• 7:21
  And one question that was brought up that I feel like was
• 7:22
  really interesting and that I love to hear a little bit more
• 7:26
  about was someone asked, we talked about numbers around like
• 7:28
  how much artist compensation with Spotify is for this past
• 7:32
  year. How does Spotify know what the
• 7:34
  numbers of payouts are in comparison to other streaming
• 7:36
  platforms is when Spotify's the only people that are talking
• 7:39
  about it? Yeah, it's a a good question
• 7:42
  because to US one of our core principles is as much
• 7:47
  transparency about how royalties work as possible.
• 7:51
  It's really, really hard to be in a creative field and make a
• 7:55
  career today in the age of the Internet.
• 7:57
  I think, I think the like table stakes, the minimum
• 8:00
  responsibility of a platform should be show creators what the
• 8:04
  revenue opportunity is on a platform.
• 8:07
  And for us for a number of years now, every year, whether growth
• 8:11
  is better than expected, lower than expected, every March we
• 8:14
  publish how much we paid out to artists in the industry, what
• 8:18
  the growth rate was and exactly how many of our artists reach
• 8:21
  different level levels of revenue.
• 8:23
  You know, so it's 300,000 artists last year who made at
• 8:26
  least $1000 a year. There was 80 who made at least
• 8:29
  $10 million a year. You go to our site, you can see
• 8:32
  every level in between. You know, no other streaming
• 8:35
  service even shares what their total payouts were.
• 8:39
  So, you know, if you're an artist and you're, you know,
• 8:41
  thinking about, OK, I'm going to try to make a career in this
• 8:44
  thing, you know, where am I going to release my music?
• 8:46
  What kind of money could I expect to make, you know, on
• 8:49
  Spotify at least, You know, all right, if I'm at this level, if
• 8:52
  I'm, you know, reaching these sorts of numbers, here's the
• 8:54
  amount of money I might get. No other service even shares how
• 8:58
  much money they pay out. And so you can sometimes look at
• 9:01
  third party industry reports. So like, you know, there's a
• 9:06
  organization called the IFBI, there's one in the US called the
• 9:09
  RI AA that people might know because they do certifications
• 9:12
  too. They'll take a bunch of industry
• 9:14
  data and publish kind of like industry level metrics.
• 9:18
  And so impairing the Spotify numbers we release compared to
• 9:22
  like what these trade bodies say.
• 9:24
  You can find out things like, you know, Spotify is about a
• 9:28
  third of all streaming revenue. So you know, when we're talking
• 9:31
  about an artist making 100,000 a year on Spotify, that might be
• 9:34
  300,000 when you factor in all the other streaming services.
• 9:37
  So you can get some data like that from these, you know,
• 9:40
  industry studies. But you know, fundamentally, I
• 9:44
  think artists deserve to be able to compare the revenue
• 9:46
  opportunity on different services.
• 9:49
  And so we're doing our part and hopefully over time you'll see
• 9:52
  more folks jump into. We can hope so.
• 9:54
  I think it's so interesting because I think when it comes to
• 9:59
  artists choosing what platform they'll put their music on, it's
• 10:02
  kind of similar to like when you're applying for a job
• 10:05
  position, you're looking at different companies saying, all
• 10:06
  right, what's compensation for the same role, you know?
• 10:08
  Yeah. So it's nice to have sort of
• 10:10
  like that glass dorification of of music.
• 10:13
  Exactly, right. You before you would pursue any
• 10:16
  career, you want to know what the revenue opportunity is
• 10:18
  exactly. And that's exactly how we're
• 10:21
  thinking about it so. In pop culture and in music,
• 10:24
  marketing is a huge conversation when it comes to things like a
• 10:28
  roll out for an album or single or whatever project.
• 10:31
  And your opinion based on like what you've seen over the past
• 10:35
  year, a couple of years, what would have been some like stand
• 10:38
  out marketing rollouts that you've seen from some artists
• 10:41
  that have been really killing it this year?
• 10:43
  Yeah, artist marketing is always fun.
• 10:44
  I'll share my personal opinion, not speaking on behalf of
• 10:47
  Spotify with these opinions as a marketer myself.
• 10:51
  Yeah, if there's one stand out campaign that inspired me as a
• 10:54
  marketer last year, it'd be the roll out of Lux by Rosalia.
• 10:59
  And I think the way she positioned it really highlights
• 11:01
  a lot of the trends we've been talking about.
• 11:04
  First, the globalization of music, right.
• 11:07
  She like sang in like 13 languages I think inspirations
• 11:11
  from 10 different genres and music cultures which is so cool
• 11:16
  to see. She was like singing an opera.
• 11:18
  Yeah, Operatic. Oh my God, unbelievable.
• 11:20
  Insane. We actually had to rush to
• 11:23
  launch a new feature, lyric translations, because we knew
• 11:27
  that's how good this album was. Our engineers rushed to launch a
• 11:30
  feature where you can see the translation of all the lyrics in
• 11:33
  your own language. So you can see.
• 11:34
  Yeah, and like. Shot to Rosalia for that cuz
• 11:36
  that's a basic feature. And that's part of the trend
• 11:39
  we're seeing across Spotify. Last year, songs in 16 different
• 11:43
  languages reached the global top 50.
• 11:46
  It's half that amount five years ago.
• 11:48
  So now because of streaming, people are discovering music
• 11:51
  and, you know, all different languages, which is so cool.
• 11:55
  And Rosalia exemplifies that. The other trend I think that she
• 12:00
  really spotlighted is, you know, in this age of AI where there
• 12:04
  is, you know, what's real, what isn't real, There's this
• 12:06
  overabundance of, you know, video content slop.
• 12:10
  People are craving authenticity and specificity.
• 12:14
  So like before, if you were going to, you know, 10 years
• 12:16
  ago, 20 years ago, if you wanted to reach the commercial success
• 12:19
  of Rosalia, everyone would tell you, you know, go really broad,
• 12:23
  go really general, do something that's really accessible to as
• 12:26
  many people as possible. Instead, she did something only
• 12:29
  she can do. And the whole position, it was
• 12:31
  about her years of training, why she had the connection to all
• 12:35
  these different genres. You know a really intentional
• 12:37
  album with the exact right number of tracks for each track
• 12:40
  has a certain role, right? Like not one of those, you know,
• 12:43
  40 song albums? Yeah, like intentionality and
• 12:46
  like playing into the niche of it all.
• 12:48
  Right. And that's what breaks through
• 12:49
  now. And she was able to build her
• 12:51
  roll out with the story around her creative process.
• 12:55
  And we've been building a lot of features like song DNA people
• 12:58
  might have heard about. We'll start to see where, you
• 13:00
  know, it brings that creative process to life on Spotify where
• 13:03
  you can click in and see who did you sample?
• 13:05
  What song is this a cover of? Who was the guitarist?
• 13:08
  Who was the mixing engineer? Who is the producer?
• 13:11
  Who is the songwriter? And Rosalie every, like, led the
• 13:14
  way with her human artistry there.
• 13:18
  And then the the third trend is definitely just the power of
• 13:22
  building a world around your music.
• 13:24
  You know, I thought her performance at the Brit Awards
• 13:27
  was like maybe the best performance I've ever seen at an
• 13:30
  award show. And it was this culmination of
• 13:32
  months of the visuals that she built on Spotify and everywhere.
• 13:36
  Right? The album had such singular
• 13:40
  iconography, for sure. She positioned it and kind of
• 13:43
  laid the bread crumbs of the themes of the album across it.
• 13:46
  She did some like cool viral stunts, which is always fun.
• 13:50
  And then her music videos that are on Spotify now, amazing
• 13:53
  performance videos, this other extension to it, I'm sure her
• 13:56
  tour is going to be insane. And so, you know, the whole way
• 14:00
  she packaged position that album, not only was it an album
• 14:03
  I love, but I think it really speaks to a lot of the core
• 14:05
  trends that we're seeing in music.
• 14:07
  For sure. And I think artists that are
• 14:09
  able to really build that world and, and bring the audience into
• 14:12
  that and like Loki, like sell the audience on that world.
• 14:15
  Cuz I feel like there's like a lot of audience buying that
• 14:17
  comes in for like introducing a new era or a new projects, sort
• 14:21
  of like a reinvention of the artist.
• 14:22
  Yeah, and I know what you mean by the word sell, and that's
• 14:25
  like the right word in some ways.
• 14:26
  But I think it's like the authenticity where you aren't
• 14:28
  selling, you're just sharing your truth.
• 14:31
  I think fans today can tell if you're doing something to try to
• 14:34
  be commercial. You know, a data point we see on
• 14:37
  Spotify, we have this metric called super listeners, which
• 14:40
  are people who listen to you as an artist actively more than 15
• 14:44
  times every month. You're super listeners, it's 2%
• 14:47
  of your audience, but nearly 30% of your streams.
• 14:51
  That's wild. And that's for the average
• 14:52
  artist. For an artist like Rosalia, they
• 14:54
  might make even more. And So what you're seeing is to
• 14:57
  succeed in the Spotify era, you don't need to try to kind of
• 15:01
  water yourself down to be for everyone.
• 15:03
  You need to be yourself authentically communicate how
• 15:07
  this is music that only you could be releasing.
• 15:10
  And when you find those super listeners that's going to power
• 15:14
  the financials of your career, they're going to be the ones
• 15:17
  doing the streams, they're going to be the ones buying your
• 15:19
  vinyl, buying your merch, going to see you on tour.
• 15:23
  That's what's going to sustain your career.
• 15:25
  And so, you know, there's no such thing as like being niche
• 15:28
  anymore, right? You just have to find your core
• 15:30
  audience. And you know, a lot of the new
• 15:32
  features we're trying to build and every other service we're
• 15:35
  trying to build around that fandom, that artist fan
• 15:37
  connection. Yeah, I that sounds so crazy
• 15:40
  when you first said it. And then I was like, wait a
• 15:42
  second, That kind of tracks because I'm Ariana Stand.
• 15:45
  I love Ariana Grande. I love the way that I listen to
• 15:48
  her, her entire discography weekly, multiple times.
• 15:51
  I'm like, yeah, I'm probably running up the streams there,
• 15:53
  right? You are definitely in her super
• 15:55
  listener data. I'm a point point something
• 15:58
  percentile, right? Yeah, that's like what powers
• 16:01
  her music career. The fact that and she can see in
• 16:04
  Spotify for artists is the product my team works on that,
• 16:07
  you know, artists use to get all of her data about what's
• 16:09
  happening on Spotify. You know, they can see, here's
• 16:11
  how my super listeners are growing or shrinking over time.
• 16:13
  Where do they live? Yeah, that's where I tour.
• 16:15
  What songs are they liking most? And yeah, Ariana and her team
• 16:21
  probably are seeing your streams and your super listener activity
• 16:25
  coming in every day. So you're saying that Ariana
• 16:26
  knows that I'm listening? In some way.
• 16:31
  How how does Spotify approach pay equity for artists with and
• 16:35
  without management and like representation?
• 16:37
  Is it different or is it about the same?
• 16:39
  Yeah, one of the great parts of streaming and Spotify has been
• 16:44
  levelling the playing field and making more opportunities for
• 16:47
  artists to pursue their career however they want.
• 16:49
  So you've got major labels, you've got indie labels, and
• 16:53
  then you've got, you know what some people call DIY?
• 16:55
  Do it yourself. Or like artists who self release
• 16:59
  their music through artist distributors you might have
• 17:01
  heard of like District Kid or CDBB, Tune Core, United Masters
• 17:06
  and and so on. That last path, the DIY path,
• 17:10
  it's kind of brand new in streaming right Before
• 17:13
  streaming, you just needed that upfront investment to be able
• 17:17
  to, it was really expensive to work in studios and produce
• 17:20
  music. You needed someone to like
• 17:22
  literally pay to produce the CDs and ship them to record stores.
• 17:25
  Promoting yourself was really hard because, right, you had to
• 17:28
  like get in front of people enough that they would go pay
• 17:31
  $20.00 for your CD. So you had to do a ton of
• 17:34
  upfront marketing to even make that sale.
• 17:37
  So DIY wasn't really a thing. Today on Spotify, $11 billion.
• 17:42
  We pay out a year, over 11 billion, 50% of it goes to indie
• 17:46
  artists and labels. That's amazing.
• 17:49
  And when we think about that DIY segment, you know, when we talk
• 17:53
  about Indies, that's DIY plus indie labels.
• 17:56
  But just that DIY segment, over a third of the artists making
• 18:00
  $10,000 or more a year are DIY or they started their career as
• 18:04
  DIY. And that's a whole new
• 18:07
  opportunity within streaming where, you know, some artists
• 18:10
  stay DIY their whole career and are making, you know, 7 figure
• 18:14
  income DIY, which is keeping crazy to think about 100% of
• 18:17
  their royalties for tons of artists to maximize the growth
• 18:21
  of their career, you start DIY, it's lowered all the barriers to
• 18:25
  entry so you can get discovered, get those first super listeners,
• 18:28
  those fans, and then you can decide to partner with a label
• 18:31
  at that point. And you have, you know, more
• 18:33
  data, more information, more fans to leverage as you're, you
• 18:36
  know, making that deal with your label who can do amazing things
• 18:40
  to help, you know, accelerate your growth and take your career
• 18:42
  to the next level. And so, yeah, Spotify over
• 18:47
  indexes our payouts towards Indies because people discover
• 18:50
  so much new music on Spotify. So even though we're about 1/3
• 18:56
  of streaming revenue in the industry, like, you know, on
• 18:59
  average we're like, you know, somewhere between 30 and 40%.
• 19:03
  And total payouts for the average indie artists and label,
• 19:06
  we're more than 50% of their streaming royalties.
• 19:10
  So, you know, our system, you know, on for the average were
• 19:14
  33%, you know, somewhere between 30 to 40%.
• 19:16
  But it's over 50% of what indie artists and labels make from
• 19:21
  their streaming revenue. And that's because Spotify
• 19:24
  inspires people to discover a lot more music than they
• 19:28
  otherwise would listen to. And so you start to see more and
• 19:30
  more indie careers get powered by that sort of discovery.
• 19:34
  Got you. I think that there's like such
• 19:36
  an important, the DIY aspect of it all, I think is so important
• 19:39
  because we're seeing now Tik tokers, people that are really
• 19:43
  using like other social media platforms to platform themselves
• 19:47
  in the music industry and really seeing success in that without
• 19:50
  having like the the traditional label or like indie support in
• 19:54
  that sense. Like one artist that I think of
• 19:56
  that is absolutely killing it and just recently hit a million
• 20:00
  monthly listeners is trim. She has like.
• 20:03
  A bunch of amazing songs for the summer that have come out on
• 20:06
  Check Talk and she she's a vibe. If you're going to be outside
• 20:09
  this summer, listen to Trib. But yeah, she's blown up in the
• 20:13
  last year. I don't believe that she's
• 20:15
  wrapped at all. And it's nice to know that, like
• 20:18
  she's getting comped the way that she deserves.
• 20:20
  To, Yeah, yeah. I mean, streaming, it's all
• 20:23
  about opportunity for sure. And then it's still really,
• 20:26
  really hard to make it as an artist.
• 20:28
  Yeah. Like, you know, none of the data
• 20:29
  we're sharing is trying to say it's easy to be an artist today.
• 20:32
  It's really, really hard. But there's more opportunities
• 20:35
  than ever because yeah, when an artist like Trim is getting
• 20:39
  started, you know, you might have had to perform locally,
• 20:43
  find a label who would take a chance on you.
• 20:44
  You kind of would take whatever deal you could get, right?
• 20:46
  Cuz you needed that money to trying to pass up the.
• 20:48
  Season on the street. Yeah, right.
• 20:49
  Remember, Yeah, that used to happen all the time.
• 20:52
  And then now you can produce music for way cheaper, which is
• 20:57
  really exciting, and then release it globally for, you
• 21:01
  know, to pay a distribute. There's no baritentry.
• 21:03
  So you can prove yourself, show the fan base that you're
• 21:06
  building, and then partner with a label when you're ready.
• 21:09
  And so, yeah, for an artist like that, it's exciting because even
• 21:13
  though it's scary, you have to put yourself out there upfront
• 21:16
  without that team around you. The exciting part is like, you
• 21:19
  know when your music connects, you've got more opportunities
• 21:22
  and more options than ever. And I think that community
• 21:25
  aspect and people really being able to rally behind an artist
• 21:28
  and building that community is so important.
• 21:30
  And it's kind of leads me to my next question that has to do
• 21:35
  with a lot of Internet discourse that I've been seeing around AI
• 21:39
  artists that have been on Spotify.
• 21:42
  When we talk about things like artist compensation and things
• 21:45
  like that, with these AI artists that are getting millions and
• 21:47
  millions of streams, what is compensation looking like for
• 21:50
  them? And is that like conversation
• 21:51
  that y'all are having at Spotify?
• 21:53
  Yeah, definitely. I mean, AI and the creative
• 21:56
  process in music's probably the biggest issue of the decade.
• 22:01
  So we spent a lot of time thinking about it.
• 22:04
  What I'd say first is you read a lot about these sort of like AI
• 22:09
  novelty acts in the press or on Reddit or on social media.
• 22:13
  Each one kind of represents a good kind of like Twitter war
• 22:19
  case study of a certain type of AI use case, whether it's like,
• 22:24
  you know, an AI identity or the way the music's made or whatever
• 22:27
  it might be. What we see in all the data is
• 22:30
  for a month, listening picks up because everyone's talking about
• 22:34
  some AI artist, Everyone's talking about it.
• 22:36
  Then everyone's talking about how high the monthly listener
• 22:39
  accounts getting because everyone's checking out because
• 22:41
  they read about it. Then a month or two passes and
• 22:44
  all those metrics tank. They're always at a fraction of
• 22:47
  where they were at the peak. We're not seeing these novelty
• 22:50
  acts build, sustain fan bases and people kind of like move on
• 22:54
  to the next example and don't think back about what happened
• 22:57
  to that one I heard about 5 months ago that everyone was
• 22:59
  talking about. It's like, you know, when we
• 23:02
  look at all the data knowing on a technical level, figuring out
• 23:06
  who's using it, AI and who's not is a really hard technical
• 23:09
  problem. No matter what third party tools
• 23:11
  we use to try to, you know, see is AI music, you know, doing
• 23:15
  well, is it not? It's like a fraction of a
• 23:17
  fraction of a fraction of consumption on Spotify.
• 23:21
  It's like, you know, well under 1%, you know, UMGA week or two
• 23:26
  ago shared from their estimation, it was like under
• 23:28
  .5%, well under .5%. And so these sorts of acts
• 23:32
  aren't gaining much royalties, aren't getting much fandom,
• 23:36
  aren't getting much streams. And so our focus has been to,
• 23:41
  you know, get ahead of those issues and a lot of aggressive
• 23:45
  policies to make sure that you can't use AI to spam,
• 23:48
  impersonate and deceive, right? If an artist wants to use AI in
• 23:52
  some way in their creative process.
• 23:54
  And like, you know, there's lots of great artists who've talked
• 23:58
  about the, you know, ways within their creative process, their
• 24:01
  creative vision. AI is one of many tools they're
• 24:03
  using. We don't want to police what
• 24:05
  creative tools people use, right?
• 24:07
  We're not going to treat you differently if you use auto
• 24:10
  tune, if you don't use auto tune, or if you record acoustic
• 24:13
  or if you use a synthesizer, right?
• 24:16
  If you're doing it responsibly, if it's just part of your human
• 24:20
  creative process, that's OK. We want that sort of music to
• 24:23
  have an opportunity. What we don't want AI used for
• 24:26
  is to spam, you know, industrial production, right?
• 24:30
  When there's no human influence, when there isn't a human artist
• 24:33
  intentionally directing how it how it works.
• 24:36
  We're doing some aggressive efforts to make sure there's
• 24:38
  less and less and less spam and slop AI generated or otherwise
• 24:43
  in Spotify and recommendations. We removed over 75,000,000
• 24:47
  spammy tracks over the last year, right as some of these AI
• 24:51
  tools are blowing up. So a lot against spam.
• 24:54
  We're really focused on impersonation.
• 24:56
  We have strengthened our policy so people that you cannot do an
• 24:59
  unauthorized voice clone. No, Yeah, that's not allowed on
• 25:04
  Spotify. Some artists like, you know,
• 25:07
  Grimes or Image and Heap, they've like, you know,
• 25:10
  commercialized and trained and authorized voice, AI voice clone
• 25:14
  of themselves and they're in charge of how it's used and they
• 25:17
  are compensated when people stream it.
• 25:19
  That's OK. Anything unauthorized not
• 25:22
  allowed on Spotify, we take it down as soon as it's confirmed
• 25:25
  it's unauthorized. Got you.
• 25:26
  Deception's probably the hardest 1 though, and you'll see us
• 25:29
  working on that a lot this year where, you know, if you're a
• 25:33
  listener, you want to understand who you're listening to.
• 25:36
  And we have a lot of work to do in this space.
• 25:38
  So you're going to see us do lots of new features around
• 25:41
  artist identity. So you can like trust who you're
• 25:43
  listening to. We want to make sure you like
• 25:46
  understand the human artistry behind it.
• 25:48
  So a feature like song DNA and about the song that we're
• 25:50
  working on highlights the human artistry.
• 25:53
  So you can look at any song, go into the song DNA and see the
• 25:56
  human producers, composers, mixing engineers, session
• 26:00
  musicians who are behind it and fall in love with that creative
• 26:03
  process. You'll see us introduced AI
• 26:05
  credits in partnership with the industry where for people
• 26:08
  responsibly using AI, they can share that with listeners so
• 26:11
  people can make conscious listening decisions.
• 26:15
  And so I definitely think we have more work to do there
• 26:18
  because even now, you know, when you look at a profile on
• 26:21
  Spotify, but also on like TikTok and Instagram and YouTube and
• 26:24
  anywhere, it's really hard to figure out what's real right
• 26:27
  now. So you'll see us focus a lot on
• 26:29
  things that authenticate and trust and verify kind of what
• 26:34
  you're listening to. That's really good to hear and
• 26:37
  really affirming here because that is something that I've been
• 26:40
  experiencing a little bit on Spotify.
• 26:43
  And I know especially like my audience has been telling me
• 26:45
  about it. And it's just great to to hear
• 26:47
  that from you because I have had I've listened to DJ and I've
• 26:51
  been noticing like sometimes I'll hear tracks.
• 26:54
  I'm like, Oh, this is kind of nice.
• 26:54
  Let me see this artist and it's not a real artist.
• 26:57
  I'm like, Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's like an unsettling
• 27:01
  thing to happen. So it's not.
• 27:03
  Just we're going to it's not just Spotify, like it's like
• 27:05
  that for all apps. Like there's so many different
• 27:07
  like creators that are posting on TikTok on YouTube that just
• 27:11
  aren't real. They're completely.
• 27:12
  Yeah, and you have to go into the comments to see if it's AI
• 27:15
  or not. Yeah.
• 27:15
  And there's no disclosure on that.
• 27:17
  So it's nice to to hear that y'all are working on that.
• 27:18
  Yeah, we're definitely working on it.
• 27:19
  You're going to experience that less and less and less and less.
• 27:23
  It is unfortunately really technically complicated to be
• 27:26
  able to kind of retroactively figure out what's AI, what
• 27:29
  isn't. We're working on lots of, you
• 27:31
  know, hopefully effective methods and ways to at least
• 27:36
  verify what's real and what you can trust, even if we're not
• 27:39
  always going to know exactly how AI was used when people are
• 27:42
  trying to be deceptive. But, you know, we've been
• 27:45
  working on aggressively. I hear about this issue a lot
• 27:48
  all the time, too. And, you know, people are going
• 27:51
  to see less and less and less of those sorts of profiles, that
• 27:54
  sort of music popping up in an experience like DJ because,
• 27:58
  yeah, that's not what anyone wants in their streaming
• 28:00
  experience where you fall in love with a song, we want you to
• 28:03
  open up. Spotify, you love a song, we
• 28:05
  want you to open up. And now you're going to see the
• 28:07
  music video and the performance video and you're going to dive
• 28:09
  into the song DNA and you're by their merch and you're going to
• 28:11
  see where they're touring. That's the Spotify we're
• 28:13
  building where it's about fandom towards human artists.
• 28:17
  We don't want you to open Spotify.
• 28:19
  And you're like, who's this artist?
• 28:20
  And it's, you know, you're confused about who it is or you
• 28:22
  don't know if it's real or not. You don't know if you can go see
• 28:25
  them live or not. Like, you know, that's not what
• 28:27
  we want. And we're going to do a lot more
• 28:28
  to make sure that's the experience that people have.
• 28:30
  Because I feel like you mentioned it before, but like
• 28:34
  almost that consent piece to like knowing who you're
• 28:37
  supporting. And I feel like there's always
• 28:41
  going to be people that like, maybe you want to opt for more
• 28:44
  of like the AI music. But like, having the option to
• 28:47
  choose that as opposed to just having that like thrust upon you
• 28:52
  all over the Internet is is a good next step, I think.
• 28:55
  Yeah, it's like first, definitely, right.
• 28:58
  Like, it's different if someone wants to explore the type of
• 29:00
  music and they're following an artist and that's like, cool.
• 29:03
  But you know, that should be up to you.
• 29:05
  I think that's true for not just the issue of AI, but also
• 29:09
  algorithms in general. That's really exciting and I'm
• 29:12
  just excited for the future of music, the future of Spotify and
• 29:15
  and seeing how things progress moving forward into 2027.
• 29:20
  Now he's crazy, crazy. I did want to wrap on a little
• 29:25
  game or a little rapid fire section if y'all have been
• 29:30
  following the podcast for a while and we're familiar with
• 29:32
  our prior conversation with Lisa, Lisa Richie.
• 29:35
  We did this emergency ink block test, but I decided we're going
• 29:40
  to do something a little different.
• 29:41
  We're going to switch it up. I'm going to say a series of
• 29:44
  statements and you just tell me whether you believe them to be
• 29:47
  true or false. True or false?
• 29:49
  First one true or false? Spotify is the only music
• 29:52
  streaming platform to be transparent with artist payment.
• 29:55
  That's true, unfortunately. That's sad.
• 29:57
  I wish others would step up. Clock it true or false, Spotify
• 30:02
  pays its artists fairly. True.
• 30:05
  I hope. Yeah.
• 30:06
  We always want to do better. Yeah, it's hard to do.
• 30:07
  One word on this. Yeah, hopefully true.
• 30:09
  True or false marketing is everywhere.
• 30:13
  True. OK, true or false, an artist
• 30:16
  roll out is more important than the actual music.
• 30:19
  False. OK, interesting.
• 30:21
  You can do a good roll out, but you're not going to get dreams
• 30:24
  after week 1 if the music isn't good, so it all goes to waste.
• 30:28
  But the opposite, If you don't do a great rollout but the
• 30:31
  music's amazing, it often breaks through.
• 30:33
  So you know in the best world you have both because a good
• 30:35
  rollout helps, but you can't fake it.
• 30:38
  You can do the best rollout and if people don't like the music,
• 30:40
  fans get to decide. That's real.
• 30:42
  Who do you think did good for both outside of Russell?
• 30:45
  Yeah. Oh man, I love Audrey Hobert,
• 30:49
  Who's the Clown was one of my favorite albums.
• 30:51
  Another example of like being exactly who you are and finding
• 30:54
  a huge fan base as a result. And she just like nailed it.
• 30:58
  From like the breakout of Sue Me through to the album, the
• 31:01
  videos, the performances, everything was so intentional
• 31:03
  and then the music was amazing. I I find her iconic just because
• 31:08
  I feel like she would normally not be someone that'll pop up on
• 31:10
  my radar. But speaking to the rollout, I
• 31:12
  saw her all over my TikTok free page and I was like, what is
• 31:16
  this? She's kind of came up.
• 31:17
  I love her right and got me sucked into the world.
• 31:19
  So yeah, that's. What she did?
• 31:20
  True or false? Spotify is 20 years old this
• 31:23
  year. True.
• 31:24
  OK, awesome and true or false, You yourself have been a pay
• 31:29
  advocate for 20 years. A pay advocate, Yeah.
• 31:35
  You know, I'd say I, I true, at least for my working career.
• 31:41
  I don't know if I can say I've been a pay advocate prior to
• 31:43
  that, but, you know, at least the, you know, decade plus I've
• 31:47
  been working. Absolutely.
• 31:48
  True. It's funny you say that because
• 31:50
  I know this to be true about you and I don't know if you remember
• 31:53
  this being true about you. You know, we love doing a little
• 31:57
  deep dive on the Emergency Room podcast, but just to like jog a
• 32:01
  little bit of memory, 20 years ago today or not today, but 20
• 32:05
  years ago, you used to be a writer.
• 32:09
  I I did used to write. And I don't know if you're
• 32:12
  familiar, but you wrote in the yell news options to pay by ID
• 32:16
  may increase reporting on the ID payment for I guess your school
• 32:21
  lunches. Oh my God.
• 32:22
  So you truly have been in this field.
• 32:24
  I'm shocked I have. No idea what you're about to
• 32:27
  say. That was 20 years ago, yeah.
• 32:30
  Oh my God, do you remember writing that?
• 32:31
  Not specifically, but I was a yeah, I was a pay advocate.
• 32:35
  I was a reporter in college and I guess I happen to pay advocate
• 32:38
  for 20 years. That makes me feel good.
• 32:41
  You know, 2 decades of of advocating for people getting
• 32:43
  paid for what they deserve. You're also you're also making
• 32:45
  me feel old just to realize college was 20 years ago.
• 32:48
  But I love it. Well, thanks for thanks for
• 32:51
  taking that up, of course. Love to bring back the past and
• 32:56
  and see how it connects because honestly it's kind of funny but
• 32:58
  like it is a through line. Yeah, that's actually
• 33:00
  incredible. Yeah.
• 33:01
  Wow. All right.
• 33:02
  I'm inspired by my by by that fact.
• 33:05
  Well, thank you so, so much for taking the time to be on the
• 33:08
  podcast and to talk through any and everything.
• 33:11
  Really appreciated your transparency in the conversation
• 33:13
  about pay transparency. Is there anything else you want
• 33:17
  to leave off on or say to the audience before we hop off?
• 33:21
  Oh God, no. Thanks so much for having me.
• 33:22
  If you're interested in this kind of stuff, if you follow
• 33:25
  Spotify for artists on Instagram or TikTok or wherever your
• 33:30
  platform of choices, that's always where we're sharing stats
• 33:33
  and resources like this. So give us a follow.
• 33:35
  Awesome. Well, thank you so much for
• 33:38
  tuning in. We're going to get back to all
• 33:40
  of these South by Southwest activities.
• 33:42
  Make sure to follow along on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter,
• 33:46
  YouTube and Spotify For more information on that, all the
• 33:49
  updates and be sure to TuneIn next week for next week's
• 33:52
  episode. Let me know all of your
• 33:54
  thoughts, what you think, Who do you want to see us talk to next?
• 33:58
  And what about next down in the comments below.
• 34:00
  And be sure to rate and follow. Yes, that's what you do on
• 34:04
  podcast. Make sure to rate and follow to
• 34:06
  keep this podcast going. But thank you all so, so much
• 34:09
  for watching. Thank you so much for being here
• 34:11
  and we'll see you next week.