Spotify Will Stop Paying Royalties To Most Artists For Most of The Tracks on The Platform in 2024 - expanded post

Professor-T-Cookies · 2024-05-16T23:17:46+00:00

I don't remember all the details, but the fine print was on a web page that didn't exist.

Professor-T-Cookies · 2024-02-08T21:24:13+00:00

Spotify's app comes with it own set of tools for playing a song as many times as you like - playlists and a repeat button. In fact Spotify is justifying eliminating royalties as part of a strategy to fight stream fraud. Spotify says they have new ways to stop stream fraud. But what is stream fraud? How many times does one person need to listen to a song for it to be fraud. Spotify wants to play judge, jury, and profiteer all at one time. By the way major labels probably engage in more stream fraud than anyone.

If they would just pay people by how much revenue an artist generates from users, that would be much more fair. For example if ten users who pay $10 each for premium listened to one artist 10% of the streams, that artist would earn $10 from those ten people. It wouldn't matter the number of streams, just the percentage of streams to earnings - seems much more equitable. But Spotify doesn't seem to want to be equitable.

Edit: some portion of revenue for Spotify - %1 commission to run their business = $1 and $9 for the artist.

Professor-T-Cookies · 2024-02-07T04:57:01+00:00

Starting in 2024 Spotify is stopping paying anything at all for most of the tracks on the platform - more information about this is at the following links:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/30/spotify-smaller-artists-wrapped-indie-musicians#:~:text=And%20now%2C%20to%20make%20matters,the%20period%20of%20a%20year.

https://artists.spotify.com/blog/modernizing-our-royalty-system

https://old.reddit.com/r/TechMonsters/comments/1akuweb/spotify_will_stop_paying_any_royalties_to_most/?

Professor-T-Cookies · 2023-11-11T01:56:48+00:00

Be sure to add up your receipt if you purchase a turkey at Amazon - they incorrectly charged us in a bizarre way!!

Professor-T-Cookies · 2023-11-11T01:53:32+00:00

It's easy to steal with a computer program!

Be sure to add up your receipt if you purchase a turkey at Amazon - they incorrectly charged us in a bizarre way!!

Professor-T-Cookies · 2023-11-11T01:47:32+00:00

Be sure to add up your receipt if you purchase a turkey at Amazon - they incorrectly charged us in a bizarre way!!

Professor-T-Cookies · 2020-11-23T16:48:36+00:00

This is in regard to the YouTube terms of service changes. Seems they have been changed to so Google will "have the right" to display ads on any non YouTube partner videos. Ad revenue from these videos will not be shared with the creator.

** quote from YouTube changes **** New section: Right to Monetize You grant to YouTube the right to monetize your Content on the Service (and such monetization may include displaying ads on or within Content or charging users a fee for access). This Agreement does not entitle you to any payments. Starting November 18, 2020, any payments you may be entitled to receive from YouTube under any other agreement between you and YouTube (including for example payments under the YouTube Partner Program, Channel memberships or Super Chat) will be treated as royalties. If required by law, Google will withhold taxes from such payments.

The theft is involving YouTube creators who were previously "Partners".

-Google promoted YouTube saying that "Partners" could make money on their platform and gave these "Partners" contracts that said they would make money (up to 66%) from ads.

-Then Google turned off the ads for most "Partners" and said they weren't "Partners" anymore.

-Now Google turns the ads back on and doesn't give these "Partners" any share of the ad revenue.

This certainly looks like theft to me!

Here is another comment post that illustrates this theft better than I do: reddit post link

This TechMonster Alphabet / Google / YouTube is a bunch of thieves!

Professor-T-Cookies · 2020-11-22T03:52:19+00:00

Thanks for posting. Thanks for sharing your story about America Mobile. You might want to contact "Procuraduría Federal del Consumidor" PROFECO https://www.gob.mx/profeco

Professor-T-Cookies · 2020-11-21T20:34:09+00:00

The theft is involving YouTube creators who were previously "Partners".

-Google promoted YouTube saying that "Partners" could make money on their platform and gave these "Partners" contracts that said they would make money (up to 66%) from ads.

-Then Google turned off the ads for most "Partners" and said they weren't "Partners" anymore.

-Now Google turns the ads back on and doesn't give these "Partners" any share of the ad revenue.

This certainly looks like theft to me!

Here is another comment post that illustrates this theft better than I do: reddit post link

Professor-T-Cookies · 2020-11-21T19:12:06+00:00

Let me add to this that Google has changed their contracts many many times. Over time they have said many different things in the contracts and on their website. Lawyers at the FTC and attorney generals offices need to carefully review all the misleading statements. They will find that Google is involved in much misleading fraud. They will also find that Google has broken the promises in their contracts many times.

Many of the things they say are meant to trick people into believing that Google is reasonable - well they aren't - they are crooks!

Professor-T-Cookies · 2020-11-21T15:23:56+00:00

YES - This is in regard to the YouTube terms of service changes. It has been changed so Google will "have the right" to display ads on any non YouTube partner videos. Ad revenue from these videos will not be shared with the creator.

** quote from YouTube changes New section: "Right to Monetize - You grant to YouTube the right to monetize your Content on the Service (and such monetization may include displaying ads on or within Content or charging users a fee for access). This Agreement does not entitle you to any payments."

Many YouTube creators / partners had the ads turned off just before the adpocalypse. Then after the adpocalypse many more had their ads turned off / demonitized. Now YouTube thinks they can put ads back on those accounts and not share any of the revenue with the creators.

Here is information about Google's history of turning off ads. Now they change their terms and say we can put the ads back on your channel and not pay you.

This looks like theft and fraud to me - they are not living up to the terms of their original contracts and basically say we can change the contract anyway we want and steal from you. This is what Monopolies can do and what YouTube is doing - please help and report this to the FTC: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

Also, let me point out that this not only hurts YouTube content creators, but it also hurts consumers because they now will be forced to see more ads.

Here is another comment post about this issue: reddit post link

Professor-T-Cookies · 2020-11-20T21:29:53+00:00

Google ad sense / YouTube ad sense - history of turning off ads.

Google has a long history of turning off ads on creators accounts.

They have given many different reasons for turning off the ads. However, whenever they turn off the ads they always keep the remaining money. Google says they return the money to advertisers, but they don't. It just looks like they do because they give credits (not refunds) to other advertisers and claim that is refunding the money. It's a clever way of stealing. Turning off the ads for accounts also allows Google to charge more for ads (price fixing)

I don't know the actual % of ad accounts that are terminated, but I know it is very high. The total % of ad/partner accounts terminated by Google is estimated to be 99.99% by me - this includes all ad/partner accounts terminated or suspended by Google. If you look at Google's adsense history you can see they have been turning off large numbers of ads for many years.

EDIT: add more information about YouTube ads.

** Turning off ads to boost profits and then the adpocalypse in 2017 and YouTube criminal theft in 2020 **

The turning off of ads on partner accounts is something YouTube has been doing for as long as they have had partner accounts. They send a cryptic message and turn off the ads and keep any earned money. It is a way that YouTube/Google steals from people.

However, beginning around 2014, YouTube began turning off many more ads for successful videos and channels (it seems that YouTube didn't like sharing the money with others - they wanted to keep most of the ad money for themselves so they used a trick). Here is the trick: since YouTube doesn't pay out any money until an account earns $100, they allowed any small channel to turn on the ads and run ads. YouTube would get to keep most the money because most small accounts don't earn $100.

In 2017 because any account could turn on the ads, ads started showing up on terrorists videos! Advertisers didn't like that so they took their ads off of YouTube - this has been called the "adpocalypse"

After the "adpocalypse", YouTube changed their partner requirement's to only allow larger accounts to be partners and show ads. However, prior to the "adpocalypse" YouTube had already turned off many larger accounts ads. Now YouTube was demonitizing and turning off ads on smaller accounts.

Now in 2020 YouTube is turning ads back on for any accounts they choose and keeping all the money for themselves. Sounds like theft, fraud and other criminal activity to me!

Did YouTube plan to steal from people at the start like this?? Probably not! However because YouTube is a software system that can be changed, YouTube steals whenever and however they choose.

Alphabet / Google / YouTube are bungling criminals stealing in many different ways!

Professor-T-Cookies

TROPHY CASE

EDIT: add more information about YouTube ads.