As you may have seen in the news, Spotify recently floated on the NY stock exchange.
Merlin (the rights agency which represents independent labels ) received an equity stake in Spotify at launch and have now disposed of these shares on the open market. Proceeds from this sale have been distributed to Merlin members (including Kudos) in proportion to each member’s Spotify turnover.
You can read more about this here.
We will shortly receive track-level accounting from Merlin covering nearly a decades worth of Spotify usage data. These reports will enable us to allocate these proceeds to labels, as per our Fair Digital Deals Declaration.
Hats off to Merlin for seeking and securing parity with major labels in their original licensing negotiations with Spotify and also for committing themselves to providing the data necessary for distributors and labels to equitably distribute this windfall on to artists. I am quite sure that many of the major’s revised policies on sharing equity gains with Artists have been a direct result of moves by indie labels to provide more equitable and transparent accounting.
