With the launch of Spotify Wrapped today, users can now get a comprehensive summary of the music they have listened to during the previous year. This begs the question, “Is that my most listened-to song?” to all of us. Some of your favorite musicians, including Weird Al, SZA, and Taylor Swift, had harsh words about Spotify’s compensation arrangement in this year’s Wrapped.
According to what I understand, I received $12 this year from over 80 million Spotify streams. If my math is correct. Thus, I guess, enough to buy myself a lovely sandwich at a restaurant,” Weird Al wrote in his Spotify post.
Famous for his parodies of songs including “White & Nerdy,” “Polka Face,” and “Eat It,” Weird Al is criticizing Spotify for not paying musicians their royalties. That is the right amount of zeros—$0.003—is what Spotify pays its greatest artists for each stream. A third of a penny, not three cents, each stream. Weird Al’s point remains even though, by that measure, he would have made little more than $12, or roughly $350,000.
Not many performers can compete with Weird Al. According to data from 2022, there are almost three million musicians on Spotify with more than ten tracks, but only 16,000 of them earn more than $50,000 on the site. This indicates that fewer than 1% of musicians can financially support themselves through Spotify.
Weird Al’s video also raises doubts about who was reviewing the artist’s messages on Spotify Wrapped. It appears that Weird Al’s message got lost in the shuffle of musicians who sent notes to their most ardent followers.
