Apple Proposes A Simpler, More Straightforward Music Royalties System

There is a bit of contention regarding music streaming, but not so much from customers who we can only assume are thrilled at paying a flat fee for pretty much unlimited streaming. Instead the people who have issue with streaming would be the artists, publishers, record labels, and so on who feel that maybe streaming isn’t paying as much royalties as it could.

We have heard this brought up many times in the past by artists such as Taylor Swift who famously got Apple to change the way royalties were paid out by Apple Music. However it looks like it won’t be ending there as Apple themselves have recently proposed a new music royalties system that would make it much simpler and potentially more lucrative for musicians and their labels.

According to a report from Billboard, Apple has proposed a payment scheme where all artists will get paid 9.1 cents per 100 streams, with 100 streams equating to a download. This is versus the current system where artists get paid between 10.5% to 12% over their overall revenue that is based on a complicated formula.

For a company as resource-rich as Apple, this new scheme isn’t an issue, but it would be an issue to other music streaming platforms, such as Spotify, who would be required to pay a minimum fee as opposed to it being a percentage of revenue. However the good/bad news is that Apple’s proposal might not necessarily go into effect.

The Cupertino company has proposed the idea to The Copyright Royalty Board who will still have to decide if this is worth pursuing and implementing, but safe to say that other music streaming services are probably not too thrilled by this idea, especially if they have a free listening tier.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Audio
Tags: Apple Music, Legal, Music, Spotify