The Wall Street Journal affirms what Apple today sent an open letter to musicians.
Most significantly, the letter says that Apple Music pays a penny per play. That’s roughly double what Spotify pays, according to estimates.
Streaming services are trying to show that they are respectful of artists, especially since concert and tour revenues have declined during the pandemic.
Music rights holders have publicly protested the current revenue sharing situation in the music streaming business, in the hope that new deals can be negotiated with major platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify.
Although Apple Music pays more per stream, the total revenue artists get from Spotify is higher as Spotify has more users.
The last time Apple Music reported that it had passed the 60 million users It was in June 2019. Spotify boasts more than 150 million paying subscribers, in addition to another 200 million who use the service with ads.
In the letter, Apple says that “Believes in paying all creators the same fee, that a reproduction has a value and that creators should never pay to perform.”
Of course, Every penny per song playback does not go directly to the artist’s pocket. That penny is shared between each of the different rights holders, such as labels, publishers and other distributors.
Since the price of a music streaming service is around $ 9.99 per monthThis means that if a user plays 1,000 songs or more a month (that is, just over 30 songs a day), the company earns less than what it pays the artists.
Therefore, there is not much room for maneuver to increase payments for reproduction.
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