Spotify has long been accused of underpaying artists while funneling large amounts of cash and equity to major labels and investors. Those concerns elevated last week, when Spotify started guaranteeing large investor payouts and preferable IPO prices to attract an additional $500 million in private loans.
Artists, a group long stiffed by the streaming sector, would receive none of those special privileges.
Is that fair to creators? Now, Billboard’s senior editorial analyst and longtime business writer Glenn Peoples is weighing in on the matter.
Now we know where Billboard stands on the matter…
The article referenced in the top tweet is here. Image by Juno Namkoong Lee (CC by 2.0).
“…when they go bankrupt.”
…who is ‘they’… Spotify, or the musicians…??
Spotify’s business is built on bankrupting musicians.
They certainly are.
Who is this retard Glenn Peoples?
Yes, who is this brave guy mentioning the collapse of Spotify?!
Billboard usually works as a glorification tube of Daniel Ek and his music pulverizing Spotify!
Wow, from a Billboard writer. I guess Silicon Valley now owns Billboard, or at least anti-artist writer Glenn Peoples. Industry execs, why do you put up with this nonsense?
This might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.
If a supermarket goes out of business, do the food suppliers owe it money?
I’d like to see Billboard go out of business.
If Billboard goes out of business, does Glenn Peoples owe them money?
Apparently Glenn Peoples is a joke.
Really tired of this nonsense. There needs to be a mandated, regulated, across-the-board royalty rate for streaming, just like there is for radio.
The entire music industry needs to come together on this issue and get it done already.
Don’t let the musicians break your spirit Glenn!
Stay strong with the multi-millionaire label CEOs and Wall Street investors… just keep the faith and you will survive!
If DMN goes out of business does Ari owe Paul money?
Quincy and Ed Sheeran can foot the bill.
“http://thejazzline.com/news/2014/11/quincy-jones-defends-spotify/”
“http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/30/ed-sheeran-spotify-streaming”
When a company goes bankrupt, as Spotify should later this year, it’s always the vendors (providers of music, in this case) who get shafted, being lucky to get pennies on the dollar for what they’re owed. So, yes, it’s a stupid question.
Billboard is so in the tank for Spotify and Pandora and the 3 major FOREIGN owned major labels in Russia, Japan and France, it’s really sick. Every Billboard writer I have ever know only cares about what is politically correct and could care less about creators and copyright owner and their royalties.
If (or should I say “when”) Spotify fails they will still owe $$$ to music creators and rights holders
Never heard anything so ludicrous in my life
Billboard needs to stop asking stupid questions and focus on their own survival in the print world.
If a bankruptcy court rules that artists have received preferential payments in the last 90 days or in some cases up to a year, the court could rule that they have to pay it back.
http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/bankruptcy/preferential-debt-payments.html
For example if artists were paid in preference to other debts like rent, server space or salaries. It would take a bankruptcy attorney to know.
It’s so unintuitive when you first hear of it that Glenn Peoples should have explained it in something longer than a tweet.
Given that Spotify’s bond holders will get paid first when Spotify goes tits up, why should musicians pay Goldman Sachs because Daniel Ek drove the company into the wall at 100 mph and flipped the front door keys to the first bum on the street after Ek survives the crash to “disrupt” another day? Stupid.
So, are we certain that royalty payments are subject to clawback? Anyone know of any previous examples or precedents?
Looked at my quarterly Streaming earnings and Spotify is paying less and less per stream. Averaging around .002 now. Apple Music is paying closer to .008-012 cents. If fans knew that you would be paying and artist 5X more per stream they would think twice about using Spotify
Sure, we now know that Billboard is anti-artist because a few sentences from one of their writers is taken out of context and twisted to make for a more scandalous “story”. There’s too much of this crap going on in the media these days. Time for an anti-media revolution. There are too many people who are too willing to buy into this crap and it’s actually dangerous. Stop being sheep.
this is sounding more and more like Madoffify……….