Whereas everybody else is busy sharing their Spotify Wrapped lists on their socials this week, “Bizarre Al” Yankovic took a while on Wednesday (Nov. 29) in his Wrapped video to share a special story. “It’s my understanding that I had over 80 million streams on Spotify this yr,” Yankovic mentioned in his clip. “So, if I’m doing the maths proper meaning I earned $12. Sufficient to get myself a pleasant sandwich at a restaurant. So, from the underside of my coronary heart, thanks on your assist, and thanks for the sandwich.”
The slam towards the streaming service that has lengthy drawn complaints for its modest pay-outs to musicians got here after a latest announcement from Spotify about an replace of its royalties cost system a press launch mentioned was meant to deal with streaming fraud. It mentioned the brand new royalty mannequin could possibly be price an extra $1 billion for rising and established acts over the following 5 years.
The controversial new mannequin is predicted to have an effect on greater than two-thirds of Spotify’s music catalog as a result of magnitude of music uploaded to the platform on which the overwhelming majority of songs don’t get very many clicks. Whereas tens of tens of millions of songs will fall beneath the 1,000 streams threshold and never qualify for royalties (these royalties shall be redistributed to a better royalty pool), a supply informed Billboard on the time that the brand new coverage will solely shift about 0.5% of Spotify’s royalty pool to extra well-liked tracks; that was equal to round $46 million in royalties in 2022 out of a complete of $9.27 billion paid out.
At press time spokespeople for Spotify and Yankovic had not returned Billboard‘s request for remark.
On Wednesday, Spotify introduced its Wrapped record of probably the most streamed artists, songs, albums and podcasts of the yr. To nobody’s shock, Taylor Swift topped the record of Spotify’s general prime artist, changing the three-years-running reigning champ, Dangerous Bunny. The 12-time Grammy winner who additionally dominated the touring field workplace this yr along with her large Eras Tour, dominated Spotify’s tally with 26.1 billion streams since Jan. 1, along with her Midnights album the second-most streamed album all over the world and her 2019 LP, Lover, coming in at No. 7.
Take a look at a re-post of Al’s video beneath.
