Royalties

A Danish man has been sentenced to prison in a “historic” case after being found guilty of fraudulently profiting from royalties on hundreds of tracks on music streaming sites.In the country’s first case of its kind, the 53-year-old man from East Jutland, whom the Danish press has decided not to name, was convicted on Thursday of making at least 2m Danish kroner (£229,676) from artificially generated streams of “several hundred” music tracks.Prosecutors had said that the numbers of streams required to generate that amount…

Spotify paid out $9 billion in streaming royalties last year, the streaming giant said Tuesday in its latest “Loud and Clear” report.Spotify’s fourth annual report, which originally launched in 2021 following criticism over its lack of transparency, noted record accomplishments, including the highest annual payment from any retailer to the music industry.“This is everything we know about how much is being paid out, how many artists are achieving different levels of success,” says Charlie Hellman, the vice president and…

Congressional representatives Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman introduced the proposed Living Wage for Musicians Act on Thursday, aimed at increasing streaming royalties for musicians online. The resolution, created in partnership with the United Musicians and Allied Workers union, calls “for economic justice and fairness in streaming,” a release from Tlaib’s office reads. Per the release, the act “would create a new streaming royalty, with the aim to compensate artists and musicians more fairly…

Five months after one of Linkin Park’s former bassists sued the band over unpaid royalties connected to their Hybrid Theory reissue, the group’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. In the motion filed Tuesday, Linkin Park’s legal team cited a number of “defects” with Kyle Christner’s lawsuit, most notably that the statute of limitations had “long since passed,” Billboard reports. Christner served as Linkin Park’s bassist for less than a year in 1999, and while he didn’t feature on 2000’s…

A new bill introduced in the House of Representatives aims to overhaul the streaming royalty payment system in an effort to help musicians build more sustainable careers in the digital age.  Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) introduced the The Living Wage for Musicians Act in the House on Wednesday. The proposal is built around the establishment of an Artist Compensation Royalty Fund, which would pay artists directly, similar to SoundExchange’s model for satellite and internet radio royalties.…

Is Cher’s $1 million royalties claim against Mary Bono strong enough? A judge seems to think so.   At a court hearing Monday, a federal judge said he believes Cher is entitled to receive ongoing composition royalties from songs including “I Got U Babe” and “The Beat Goes On” as outlined in her 1978 divorce agreement with Sonny Bono – despite Sonny’s heirs exercising their right to recapture his underlying copyrights under the federal Copyright Act. In his tentative ruling delivered from the bench, U.S.…

Hasbro has already earned over £71million in royalties from Baldur’s Gate 3. Released in August last year, Baldur’s Gate 3 became one of the biggest, most successful games of 2023. It was one of NME’s Games Of 2023 and picked up six awards at The Game Awards, including Game Of The Year. To make the game though, Larian Studios licensed property from Wizard Of The Coast’s iconic role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Because of this, parent company Hasbro has already received over £71million in royalties . And they’re…

Apple has gone all in on Spatial Audio on its music streaming platform, recently offering more revenue to artists and labels that use the format. Apple wants to encourage more artists to use the format, so that Apple Music has more Spatial Audio tracks to tempt users from competing services like Spotify.Artists and labels appear to be discouraged, however — a number of different indie record producers are not happy with the new revenue decision from Apple’s camp.Spatial record discrimination?The Financial Times broke the…

Apple’s new plan to give a higher cut of royalties to artists who offer spatial audio has pissed off some indie labels, who argue it will take potential earnings away from them in favor of companies with more resources at their disposal, according to a report from the . Apple last month started offering to artists who release spatial audio tracks on Apple Music. But, this comes out of the same fixed pool of money also used to pay artists who do not offer the format.Spatial audio is produced using Dolby Atmos technology…

As first reported by the Financial Times, independent labels Beggars Group, Secretly Group, and Partisan Records are pushing back against Apple’s preferential payouts for spatial audio. They say independent artists who can’t afford to record in spatial audio would make less because of how streaming music payouts work.Apple said artists on Apple Music can get bonuses of up to 10 percent for creating music with spatial audio. The company will pay out artists with pro rata shares from a pool of subscription money, calculated…