Stream weavers: The musicians' dilemma in Spotify's pay-to-play plan

Stream weavers: The musicians’ dilemma in Spotify’s pay-to-play plan
January 19, 2021 | 12:02 am
By John Hawkins, Ben Freyens and Michael James Walsh
Spotify offered the promise that, in the age of digital downloads, all artists would get paid for their music, and some would get paid a lot.
Lorde and Billie Eilish showed what was possible.
Lorde was just 16 when, in 2012, she uploaded her debut EP to SoundCloud. A few months later, Sean Parker (of Napster and Facebook fame) put her first single — “Royals” — on his popular Spotify Hipster International playlist. The song has sold more than 10 million copies.
Eilish’s rags-to-riches story is a little murkier. But the approved narrative begins in 2015, when the 13-year-old uploaded “Ocean Eyes” (a song written by her older brother) to SoundCloud. She was “discovered.” Spotify enthusiastically promoted “Ocean Eyes” on its Today’s Top Hits playlist. She is now the youngest artist with a billion streams to her name, and Spotify’s most-streamed female artist for the past two years

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