According to the BBC, Last week Spotify reportedly paid £7.7bn in royalty payments to artists.

Yet this large scale survey by Music Week showed that 7 out of 10 musical artists were dissatisfied with royalty payments from Digital Streaming Providers (DSP’s).

Unlicensed domestic music services for home use pay artists a fraction of the royalties they used to receive from CD sales, in fact Spotify no longer pays any royalties to artists with under 1000 streams per year. With 120,000 new tracks uploaded added each day the pool of royalties is spread wider.

“There are still parties taking advantage of the low bargaining power of artists, not providing fair remuneration, full transparency or not giving the opportunity for artists to renegotiate their deals.”

IAO’s Streams & Dreams report, 2024

Commercially licensed music from registered PRS/PPL suppliers like Auracle Sound report track usage, database retention and other statistics to the PRS/PPL quarterly. B2B suppliers, ‘dubbing license’ allows them to offer businesses music that has been licensed for public performance in a business premises.

The PRS/PPL Music License alone is not enough, UK Businesses also have to play music that has been licensed for public performance.

This means that the songwriter, musicians, labels and publishers all get paid a fair royalty for the performance of their copyright works in public.