Spotify Releases Its Policy Roadmap

Fresh off revealing its $11 billion royalty payout to music rightsholders in 2025, Spotify has unveiled its policy roadmap for “maintaining the growth and resilience of music streaming.”

In a nutshell:

• The roadmap centers on two key areas: strengthening the royalty infrastructure (“Fix the Pipes”), and expanding total music revenues (“Grow the Pie”).

Fix the Pipes:

• In terms of the royalty infrastructure, Spotify highlights the need to improve metadata quality by requiring “all essential identifiers to be included” when music is delivered to streaming services by labels and aggregators.

• It also proposes that Collective Management Organizations (CMOs) facilitate timely notification to songwriters and publishers of rights conflicts before payouts are processed, and that songwriters have a mechanism to “verify and correct their data in collaboration with CMOs or publishers.”

• Also key is promoting transparency around CMOs and the flow of royalties, with CMOs publishing high-level metrics around admin costs, matching accuracy, payout timelines and revenue by revenue stream category.

• Spotify also wants the establishment of “shared industry benchmarks for efficiency, cost ratios, and resolution timelines to help guide continuous improvement in royalty processing,” and the use of “cost-effective alternative dispute resolution mechanisms to help resolve licensing conflicts with CMOs more quickly and collaboratively.”

• Lastly, it calls on its streaming competitors to regularly publish “high-level royalty payout information... including aggregate payouts to rightsholders and artist revenue trends, to support shared understanding and informed policymaking.”

Grow the Pie:

• Spotify says the key to increasing global revenue is removing “unlicensed music services,” providing “law enforcement resources to fighting fraudsters,” while giving rightsholders “effective tools to combat online copyright infringement.”

• Also key is fighting AI misuse via implementing “industry-wide metadata standards to enable responsible disclosure for the different ways AI may have been used in music making, giving listeners consistent, meaningful information.”

• Other proposals include removing programming mandates to “protect consumers’ right to access the music of their choice,” as well as removing new taxes or levies on streaming which in turn reduce artists’ royalty pools.

• The alternative, says Spotify, is to allocate a “portion of existing tax revenues to support session musicians, emerging artists, and local talent.”

What they said:

• Spotify: “Collaboration and targeted reforms can grow the music royalty pie and improve how royalties flow, boosting transparency and ensuring earnings reach the right artists and songwriters. Spotify will continue to share data and practical insight to support evidence-based policy and long-term growth for creators and fans.”