Another label quits Spotify

Another heavy metal has said it is quitting streaming music platform Spotify. Prosthetic Records has followed Century Media and Metal Blade in pulling its content from the Spotify service, with its co-owner EJ Johantgen telling LA Weekly "there [does] not appear to be an upside" to being part of the Spotify party and that payouts are "fractions of pennies". An online debate about Spotify's payments to both labels and songwriters has been initiated by self-releasing indie-folk outfit Uniform Motion based around the royalties they earn on their sound recordings (as both label and recording artist) rather than their publishing (as songwriters). Posting a long blog about the economics of being a DIY artist, they provided some interesting insights into what artists can make from the various digital services - both download and mail-order - and streaming - and the blog led to an online debate comparing the money artists can make 'per download' via services such as iTunes and 'per stream' models such as Spotify. Spotify responded by pointing out the diffence between the two models and saying that they has paid out $100 million to rights owners, that they are the second largest source of digital revenue for European labels. Interestingly, Uniform Motion has since noted on their blog that their problem with Spotify and other streaming services isn't so much how much they get paid per stream, but rather how that fee relates to what the streaming firms earn for ad sales and subscriptions. They say: "What we dislike about Spotify, is the lack of transparency in their business model. With Apple, it's simple. They take 30%. With Spotify, we don't know if we're getting a fair deal or not".