Watch “Weird Al” Yankovic slam Spotify payment in his #SpotifyWrapped thank you video

30 November, 2023

Weird Al Yankovic

“Weird Al” Yankovic has used his #SpotifyWrapped thank you message to take aim at what he sees as poor pay for artists by Spotify.

The streaming service launched its 2023 edition of Wrapped yesterday (November 29), where users can find out what they listened to most in the past year. Some artists make video messages which are sent to their top fans, but Yankovic used his as an opportunity to criticise the platform over its pay model.

“Look, I’ll make this really quick,” Yankovic said in the video. “I just want to thank you all for your amazing support. It’s my understanding that I had over 80 million streams on Spotify this year so, if I’m doing the math right, that means I earned $12. Enough to get myself a nice sandwich at a restaurant.

“So, from the bottom of my heart, thanks for your support, and thanks for the sandwich.”

Indeed, the platform made the controversial decision to change their royalty model earlier this year. Songs won’t start earning money until they are streamed 1,000 times.

According to Spotify data, there are around 100million songs on the service, yet only around 37.5million meet the new requirements to generate revenue.

This means that around 60 per cent of tracks will not qualify for the new threshold, although Spotify did recall that these songs make up less than one per cent of the total number of streams on the service.

In addition, labels and distributors will be charged a penalty for delivering content responsible for fraudulent streams. And finally, functional tracks, like white noise or environmental sounds, for example, will require a longer minimum play time than music tracks to earn royalties.

Despite these changes, Spotify reported better-than-expected third-quarter profits and subscriber gains.

Yesterday, many artists including The Hives, Linkin Park, L.S. Dunes and more – took to social media to share their own statistics and thank fans for listening throughout the year.

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