In a letter to the artists and their companies, Apple clarifies without false modesty the reward system in effect for its music streaming service. Thus, we discover that the company pays 52% of the price of an Apple Music subscription for stickers, and that artists get, on average, 1% of listening on the platform.

Apple wants a “fair” reward for artists for its Apple Music service // Source: Daniel Cañibano – Unsplash

Consulted by The Wall Street Journal, a letter from Apple dedicated to artists and brands outlines the bonus terms applicable to its Apple Music service. The sending of this letter, earlier in the week, comes as Great Britain launched an investigation to assess the fairness of the conditions that online music platforms provide to artists.

Chance to find out Apple is paying stickers 52% of the price of an Apple Music subscription. After that, it’s up to these marks (or the rights holders), to pay their stakes to the artists according to their registry, publishing, and distribution agreements, MacRumors notes. On average, artists are paid 1 cent ($ 0.01) per listening to Apple Music. To generate income, for example, $ 1000, it is therefore necessary that their songs be listened to 100,000 times by the users of the service.

Apple further specifies that its policy on Proceeds It is about presenting the same styles to all artists. ” We believe in paying every content creator the same price, that a piece has value and that creators should never pay [pour faire la promotion de leur musique] So it seems that the equality between a young independent artist and a successful singer is intact.

More complex and less profitable system in Spotify

As AppleInsider points out, the system applied to Spotify is more complex and often less helpful to the artists and their labels. This complication is justified by the dual free / paid version in effect on the platform, while Apple Music can only be accessed via subscription. Therefore, Spotify pays between 50 and 53% of its subscription price to the labels, but the listening fee is generally less than the half offered on Apple Music.

However, Spotify weighs more than Apple Music in the music industry. AppleInsider recalls that the Swedish online music giant has 155 million paid subscribers for a total of 345 million active users (collecting free subscribers and users subject to advertising). Apple keeps not drawing attention to the number of Apple Music users. In 2019, the company announced, however, that it had crossed 60 million subscribers. Mathematically, Spotify pays the industry more than Apple, which partly compensates for its less favorable terms.

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