Spotify Overhauls Royalty System to Tackle Streaming Fraud

New policies include a 1,000-stream minimum for royalty generation and penalties for artificial streaming, aiming to redirect an additional $1 billion toward artists over the next five years.

Spotify has announced a significant change in its royalty system, introducing a payment threshold where songs must reach at least 1,000 streams before they can generate any royalties.
Spotify's new policies aim to combat streaming fraud, better distribute small payments that aren't reaching artists, and rein in those attempting to game the system.
Spotify will start charging labels and distributors per track when flagrant artificial streaming is detected on their content.
Spotify claims the updates will drive an additional $1 billion toward artists over the next five years by re-directing payments that had previously gone to fraudulent streams, noise content or distributors that do not distribute royalties below a certain amount.
Spotify will increase the minimum track length of functional noise recordings to two minutes, in order to be eligible to generate royalties.