Music artists on Spotify need 4m Spotify plays to earn minimum wage, according to claims made by a PacketVideo executive last week.
Rick Schwartz, PacketVideo’s director of connected home software, was speaking at the Connected Home Global Summit in London.
Schwartz said that artists used to have to sell 1,100 CDs to generate the equivalent of the minimum wage, but that Spotify’s royalty rates now make that task significantly harder for artists.
In contrast, artists need just less than 850,000 monthly plays on Rhapsody to achieve approximately the same royalties, according to Schwartz.
The comments echo the ongoing debate regarding the value of music streaming services to content creators as adoption of platforms such as Spotify, Rdio and MOG continue.