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Spotify Must Ditch Its ‘Blatantly Dishonest’ Scheme to Deny Songwriters Their Fair Share (Guest Column)

Spotify must pay songwriters their fair share, says the company's former music publishing head and music consultant Adam Parness in a guest column.

In just the last few years, this includes appealing the Phonorecords III decision, which reasonably raised the mechanical royalty rate from 10.5% to 15.1% of revenue over a five-year period (while also providing discounted terms for family and student accounts that are beneficial to Spotify and other music services). Almost immediately after serving notice of its intention to appeal Phonorecords III, Spotify moved to retroactively implement the Copyright Royalty Board’s final pre-appeal decision and clawed back a multi-million-dollar credit from songwriters and music publishers throughout 2019. Here is my genuine and respectful appeal to Spotify, and it’s not a big ask: Please voluntarily honor the Phonorecords IVsettlement on the intended terms that you know fully well were agreed to and promptly reverse course on your misguided attempts to reduce U.S. mechanical royalties in this manner.

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