Spotify Argumentative Essay

The music industry is known to be one of the most cutthroat industries in today’s time. With physical copies of music becoming more and more ostracized, digital music streaming services have increased in popularity and usage over the past few years. Musicians can now get their music out into the world more effectively through these streaming services including Spotify, Youtube, and Apple Music. In the past few years, Spotify has gained much criticism in regards to the ways the company pays musicians. However, as Spotify continues to make millions, other companies such as Apple have set a target on them. In order to survive the perils that come with the digitally advancing music industry, Spotify must work to better compensate artists. Streaming

“These are called record one royalties, because they’re paid from the first record that the company sells” (Passman). All music producers at one point has had to pay royalties on every single album they took part on. However, producers still make more money on their end than the artist no matter what because producer royalties are computed to be less favorable to musicians, exposing yet another flaw in the music industry. A website has recently been created in hopes to sell off deeds to the music simply called Royalty Exchange. Royalty Exchange allows songs to share parts in the royalty amounts. CEO Sean Peace believes his website can help the music industry get back on its feet since the physical amount of print music has drastically decreased over the last several years. “Over time, he expects laws to change to allow non-accredited investors to participate, and a secondary market for royalty shares to form” (Baverman). While Peace’s predictions might prove to be too revolutionary for this time, he is on the right track to keeping up with the ever-changing music industry and how royalties