Spotify sparks artist anger

The debate around the value of Spotify to artists has flared up again, with independent distributor ST Holdings pulling their catalogue from the service and Mercury-nominated songwriter Jon Hopkins getting very vocal on Twitter about Spotify’s shortcomings. Hopkins claimed that he was paid under £10 for almost 1000,000 plays, tweeting: “Got paid £8 for 90,000 plays. Fuck Spotify", followed by: "Radio 1 pay about £50 for each play".

Hopkins will now join Coldplay, Tom Waits and Adele in pulling his music from the platform. ST Holdings withdrew its entire catalogue from Spotify, Simfy, Rdio and Napster earlier this month, stating: “We have taken the decision to no longer provide content to any of the above streaming-type music services. This decision is based on the fact that the revenue from such services is negligible and these services cannibalise revenue from the likes of iTunes”.

The independent distributor specialise in small labels that release electronic music including dubstep and drum & bass.

Just a few weeks ago, The Gen asked ‘Does Spotify add up for artists?’ and the answer seems to be that increasingly it doesn’t, though there is the counter-argument that services such as Spotify help to reduce piracy and that it is unrealistic for artists to equate streaming sites with selling albums, royalties from radio or gig tickets as traditional key streams of revenue.