![]() (Disclosure: I have been a Spotify subscriber since it launched in the U.S. nearly 11 years ago, and yes, I pay for it.) That money is a pittance compared to what CDs generated, but it’s turned 15 years of downturn into seven solid years of growth. It is a creation on the level of the Walkman and iTunes - arguably bigger. And it has been led by Ek every step of the way.īut too often, with success comes overconfidence that quickly turns into hubris. The company stumbled badly in 2018 by attempting to be on the right side of history and banning R. Kelly from its playlists - until they realized he actually hadn’t been convicted of any crimes yet and, oh, we have lots of music by convicted murderers like Phil Spector on our playlists. After some hemming and hawing, Ek backed off of that approach, admitted “ We rolled this out wrong” and (apparently) quietly kept the ban in place but just didn’t talk about it.īut the company’s assault on songwriters’ income - in concert with competing platforms YouTube, Amazon and Pandora - is mind-boggling hypocrisy: Not only is Spotify built on songs, it is fully aware that songwriters’ livelihoods have been decimated in the past two decades, and yet they’re undertaking a multimillion-dollar, years-long campaign to pay songwriters less. “Look at our songwriters hub with pages and playlists we’ve made for them!” Swell - try finding a songwriting credit on Spotify.
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