Report: Million Spotify Streams Earn Lady Gaga Just $167

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on November 23, 2009 - 10:03am.

Los Angeles - Despite racking up more than a million streams in Sweden during a five month period on ad-supported streaming service Spotify, artist Lady Gaga's song "Poker Face" generated a songwriting royalty payment of just $167 from Swedish performing rights society STIM, TorrentFreak reported, citing the local Swedish outlet Expressen.

STIM and Spotify disputed the figures, with STIM telling PaidContent the song generated a total of $334 in songwriting royalties, of which the artist kept half.

Spotify noted in a statement to PaidContent that the STIM payment "would only represent a fraction" of Lady Gaga's total revenue on the song from Spotify, which pays "not only collecting societies, but also publishers and the record company to play their music."

Spotify further told PaidContnet the $167 figure is "certainly wide of the mark," and was accrued during a time in the company's growth "before we'd established ourselves as a music service and built up a large user base."

In related news, Spotify on Monday announced the launch of versions of its streaming music application for the Symbian mobile phone operating system, used by Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung.

The company recently pushed back the planned launch of its service in the U.S. from this fall into 2010, citing ongoing licensing negotiations with U.S. music publishers.

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/te5gh (TorrentFreak)

http://snipurl.com/te5d1 (PaidContent)

http://snipurl.com/te5fr (Expressen)

http://www.stim.se

http://www.spotify.com