Chris Daniels: Spotify CEO Daniel EK is worth $7.2 billion, according to an updated analysis by Forbes. That makes him far richer than any musician in history. The top 5 active artists – Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Bruce Springsteen – are collectively worth $6.8 billion.
Chris Kresge response: Let’s seriously breakdown those numbers. Daniel Ek owns 14.224 million ordinary shares in the company, which is approximately 15.6% of the total shares outstanding.
However, Ek’s ownership is more complex than this because he holds shares through his company D.G.E Investments, and he also has voting rights for shares owned by Tencent Holdings.
Ek has sold shares of Spotify several times in 2024, including:
February: Sold 250,000 shares for $57.5 million
April: Sold shares for $118.8 million
November: Sold 75,000 shares for $34.8 million, 75,000 shares for $36.1 million, and 35.8 million shares for a total of $106.7 million In total, Ek has sold $283 million worth of Spotify shares in 2024.
The biggest single cash-out of SPOT stock, though, hasn’t come from Ek – it’s come from his co-founder in Spotify. A separate SEC filing spotted by MBW and registered this week confirms that Rosello Company Ltd sold 959,762 shares on Wednesday (November 13). That sale generated a whopping USD $383.75 million in proceeds.
Ek’s personal worth does not come from Spotify revenues, directly. And his collective wealth does not come from Spotify, soley. He’s got holdings in other companies, including Neko Health, a medical technology company he founded that uses AI and sensors to collect and analyze health data.
FY 2023: Spotify reported a revenue of $13.9 BILLION, with 87% coming from premium services and 13% from ad-supported services. Spotify’s net loss for the year was $558.8 million, an increase from $451.6 million in 2022.
Q1 2024: Spotify reported a revenue of $3.9 billion, a gross profit of $1.08 billion, and an operating income of $180 million. Total debt on the balance sheet as of September 2024 : $1.99 Billion USD. A company’s total debt is the sum of all current and non-current debts.
According to various sources Spotify pays out 60% to 75% of its collected revenues to rights holders. As an example, Spotify pays 75% of its royalties to UK artists, with 75% of those royalties coming from international listeners.
Internationally, in 2023, Spotify paid out $9 billion to music rightsholders, which was about 62.8% of its annual revenue.
Iceland, for instance, has the highest payout at $0.006 per stream and $6182.9 per one million streams. In comparison, Spotify pays only $702.53 per one million streams in Tunisia. Developed nations have more leverage in the industry.
Spotify uses a pro-rata model to distribute revenue. It pools all ad and subscription revenue for the month, keeps 30%, and distributes the remaining 70% to rights holders based on their share of total streams
Spotify calculates how much it pays to rights holders using a process called streamshare. Streamshare is calculated by dividing the number of times a song is streamed by a rights holder by the total number of streams in a given market.
The total royalty pool for each country is based on the amount of money made from subscriptions and advertisements in that market.
Rights holders include record labels, distributors, aggregators, and collecting societies. These rights holders then pay their artists based on their contracts. For example, Spotify pays the master license holder 60%, and then that record label pays the agreed royalty percentage to the artists.
Napster and Tidal pay significantly higher rates per stream than Spotify and YouTube, but have far lower stream counts.
I woke up, saw this post and my horns itched …
Love, goat.
PS: If we’re unhappy with streaming royalty rates, Daniel Ek is not to blame.
Chris Daniels’ reply: Great seminar but the point of the original comment is not the stream rate. It is not even the disparity between and artist who gets about $6,000 for a million streams and the bloated stock prices of a company that loses money on an annual basis. It is about the collapse of one of the three legs of the stool that supported a career in music for a recording/touring/songwriter artist. Steve Knopper documented it well in his book – but any middle-class artist confronts the same problem – one of the three revenue streams we survived on is gone. Sale of recordings via streaming has not replaced our annual revenue from sale of recordings and the founder of the recorded music distribution service loses money on that platform and makes billions on the stock sales – I argue that it is unsustainable – and in the future I think there is room for something better.
Yes, the public has embraced the streaming model. But that is because the benefits are pretty good – unlimited music access.
Musicians are not doing as well – replacing sale of recorded music revenue with teaching, day jobs, working in media and radio etc. They still play gigs but that has its troubles too. And if they write songs there is publishing income for some.
Selling recordings was the “ gold rush” of its day 1920 to 2001. But it was a small number of folks that “ got rich” on the ore – it was the hardware and service sector that thrived.
For musicians – the sale of recordings for middle class artists was a gold rush that benefited studios, distributors and fans. Starting in 1987 CDs became a viable revenue stream – cost about $4 and sale at gig or retail – net about $8. Between 1987 and 2009 I sold about $20,000+ in CDs a year in Tower Records and at gigs…some years much more…Louie Louie went through 10 pressings thanks to distribution with BMG. In 2024 my net from streaming and physical product will be less than $4,000…half from web sales and gig sales and half from Spotify. So I teach, which I love, I produce records for others, I have other ways to replace that CD sale revenue stream.
Over the years patronage and other models – TikTok – videos have all appeared and been successful.
What I believe is coming – will be a Spotify replacement via AI. Where your music choices are analyzed and catalogues and new music can be offered to you directly FROM THE ARTIST PLATFORM – without Spotify or iTunes or others as “ middleman” – that gives fractions of a penny to the artist while trying to prop up their bloated stock price. Knopper’s book and studies showed that consumers would pay considerably more for music if they knew it went to the artist. Would you pay 99 cents for unlimited access to a song if 70cents went to the artist ? We did in 2012. So would you pay 99 cents for unlimited access to an entire album if say 90 cents went directly to the artist? AI can make that happen. At least it is being looked at. It could completely change the paradigm of a Spotify losing money annually, their stock making billions for a few, and artists getting fractions of a cent. It has the chance – if developed – of bringing back some of the revenue stream for recorded music to middle class musicians – you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
Photo: Chris Daniels | https://www.facebook.com/chrisdanielsdenver