Spotify accused of using new streaming policy to reduce indie artist's royalties

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An indie musician is accusing Spotify of engaging in “undisclosed, unfair, and deceptive business practices” that pay smaller artists less.Mark Kratter, a Connecticut-based musician, filed a complaint last week against the Swedish streamer.He has accused Spotify of employing “opaque rules and undisclosed filtering criteria that disproportionately harm independent artists” and in turn benefit “major labels and high-volume catalogs.”The complaint claims that, due to the company’s streaming policies, compensation to indie artists is being reduced “by filtering legitimate listening activity, failing to count key engagement signals, suppressing algorithmic discovery, and imposing a 1,000-stream minimum threshold before any royalties are paid.”The lawsuit claims that in March, the company implemented a change to its streaming algorithm that directly affected Kratter’s streaming numbers.

Hollywood Inc.After much criticism, Spotify has launched a new certification badge, “Verified by Spotify.” The marker will distinguish human artists from AI.Before these alleged changes, Kratter’s Spotify streams were “stable and consistent,” meaning that counted streams were proportional to listener activity, the complaint alleges.But ever since March, his listening data “shows a sharp and measurable decline in counted streams, despite continued listener activity,” as detailed in the complaint.

The lawsuit specifically said Kratter’s profile data shows that listener activity on the platform, including saves and playlist additions, exceeded counted streams.Spotify first implemented its 1,000-stream policy in 2024.This means that in order for a song to be eligible for royalty payouts, it needs to hit 1,000 streams on the platform.

When introducing this regulation, the company said in a statement that tracks with fewer than 1,000 streams generated an average of only th...