Spotify accused of using new streaming policy to reduce indie artist's royalties

An indie instrumentalist is accusing Spotify of engaging successful “undisclosed, unfair, and deceptive concern practices” that wage smaller artists less.

Mark Kratter, a Connecticut-based musician, filed a ailment past week against the Swedish streamer. He has accused Spotify of employing “opaque rules and undisclosed filtering criteria that disproportionately harm autarkic artists” and successful crook payment “major labels and high-volume catalogs.”

The ailment claims that, owed to the company’s streaming policies, compensation to indie artists is being reduced “by filtering morganatic listening activity, failing to number cardinal engagement signals, suppressing algorithmic discovery, and imposing a 1,000-stream minimum threshold earlier immoderate royalties are paid.”

The suit claims that successful March, the institution implemented a alteration to its streaming algorithm that straight affected Kratter’s streaming numbers.

Before these alleged changes, Kratter’s Spotify streams were “stable and consistent,” meaning that counted streams were proportional to listener activity, the ailment alleges.

But ever since March, his listening information “shows a crisp and measurable diminution successful counted streams, contempt continued listener activity,” arsenic elaborate successful the complaint. The suit specifically said Kratter’s illustration information shows that listener enactment connected the platform, including saves and playlist additions, exceeded counted streams.

Spotify archetypal implemented its 1,000-stream argumentation successful 2024. This means that successful bid for a opus to beryllium eligible for royalty payouts, it needs to deed 1,000 streams connected the platform. When introducing this regulation, the institution said successful a connection that tracks with less than 1,000 streams generated an mean of lone 3 cents per month.

The institution said successful 2023 that “99.5% of each streams are of tracks that person astatine slightest 1,000 yearly streams, and each of those tracks volition gain much nether this policy.”

There was nary nationalist announcement of a regularisation oregon metric alteration astatine Spotify successful March. The institution could not beryllium instantly reached for comment.

Spotify has said antecedently that it paid much than $11 cardinal to the euphony manufacture successful 2025. Nearly 14,000 artists earned $100,000 successful Spotify royalties unsocial past year, and autarkic artists and labels accounted for astir fractional of each payments, according to the streamer.