Spotify's Copyright Battle Highlights Challenges Around Music Ownership and Royalties

Jul 7, 2022

The ongoing battle regarding artists royalties has finally come to an end. The Copyright Royalty Board has ultimately decided to maintain its decision to increase the headline rate paid to songwriters in the United States from on-demand streaming services between the years 2018 and 2022. The percentage figure has increased from 10.5% to 15.1%. This is the largest increase in the history of CRB. Companies like Spotify, Amazon, and a few others urged to appeal against these rates but their request was denied. David Israelite, the CEO and President of the NMPA, made a public announcement stating that, “songwriters need and deserve a significant raise from the digital streaming services who profit from their work. Now, songwriters and music publishers finally can be made whole and receive the rightful royalty rates from streaming services that they should’ve been paid years ago. We will work to ensure that the services quickly backpay copyright owners as they are required by law.” 

This progressive movement for ownership is something that we see constantly within the NFT community. Allowing artists to have the power they rightfully deserve is why so many musicians incorporate NFTs into their projects. A great example of this would be Tory Lanez. Tory released an NFT album and sold one million copies for $1 each, and his team was able to keep the entirety of these funds. However if he realized his profits through a label, then the label would be taking a HUGE percentage of his profits. 

Ways Curios is moving the needle to empower artists: 

1. Curios' powers artists to sell their music directly to their customers with zero friction…
2. The Curios NFT platform includes digital rights management (DRM) and secure streaming of owned content (sometimes referred to as “unlockable content”), so that the purchasers of the NFTs can listen to the music they “OWN” anytime for free…
3. Curios' smart contracts include built-in royalty collection and payout to artists and other parties…

Curios loves to see funds start moving back towards the creators and is constantly working to create tools for artists to leverage their art as NFTs.