Spotify has adopted a new policy for its streaming service and it’s bad news for unpopular music.
The streaming service is seeking to cut down on fraudulent streams, and is requiring a longer track length for noise content such as whistling wind and rain.
The big change is that songs with less than 1,000 streams will not receive any payments.
It’s a big deal because, according to data by entertainment industry monitoring site Luminate, 82 per cent of uploaded tracks, some 152 million songs, would not have qualified for payment last year based on the rule.
The statistics reveal an astonishing situation – a huge amount of music submitted to the streamed service never makes it to listeners’ ears.
Luminate says that last year, 45.6 million tracks didn’t rate a single stream. Yet 100,000 songs are sent to the platform daily, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Luminate’s 2023 report includes other statistics: Taylor Swift makes up 1.79 percent of the total US streaming market with 1 in 78 audio streams being a Taylor Swift song.
While Gen Z and Millennials are more likely to discover new content through movies, Gen Z is 43 percent more likely to watch animated/cartoon movies than the average consumer.
Some 33 percent of Millennials who listen to predominantly Black music genres are more likely to choose entertainment content that helps “connect with my culture/identity/values”.
The US leads with 1.454 trillion streams followed by India (1.037 Trillion streams), Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia. Australia does not rate in the top 10.
