It's no secret that many artists, the latest being Cradle Of Filth vocalist Dani Filth, have openly criticized Spotify's practices regarding artists royalties, even calling them out as the biggest criminals in the world. Some shady tactics like offering exposure for even lower royalty rates don't make the streaming platform any more popular in the eyes of the musicians.
In a move that shouldn't surprise anyone, Spotify has announced they will be increasing the price for the premium subscription in a number of markets – and yes, before you ask, the United States is one of those.
"With 200+ million Premium subscribers, we’re also proud to be the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service, giving Premium users access to on-demand and ad-free music listening, offline music downloads, and quality music streaming," wrote Spotify. "The market landscape has continued to evolve since we launched. So that we can keep innovating, we are changing our Premium prices across a number of markets around the world. These updates will help us continue to deliver value to fans and artists on our platform."
The company said it will notify subscribers of the upcoming price increase via email and give them a one-month grace period before the change takes effect.
What really sucks is that is zero mention about this change having any kind of effect in the ridiculous payments that artists are receiving. Spotify's abysmally low pay for regular streams is somewhere around $0.003 to $0.005, and they recently updated their app to be an endless scroll through the homepage with a very TikTok look to it. And it's not like Spotify paying pennies is new – barely anyone made a livable wage last year, either.
