Spotify to stop payment for songs with less than 1,000 plays

Spotify tightens rules for payouts to artists and labels, specifically targeting smaller artists. The company claims the changes are meant to eliminate fraud, but this will result in no payment for songs with fewer than 1,000 streams per year. Spotify also cuts payments for “noise” content under two minutes in length and plans to lower royalty payouts for such recordings. The company claims these cuts will result in an additional $1 billion towards artists over the next five years, but has not provided details on how the funds will be redistributed. Spotify also says that 99.5 percent of all streams meet the new thresholds, but the remaining 0.5 percent only account for $40 million per year. Meanwhile, Spotify is shutting down in Uruguay due to a new bill that requires fair pay to artists. The company claims that complying with this law would make its business model “unfeasible.”