As far as years go, Daniel Ek is probably hoping to see the back of this one sooner rather than later. It’s not exactly been a good 2023 for Spotify – they’ve had to lay off over 2000 members of staff across the whole year, chief financial officer Paul Vogel has just left after pocketing over £7million worth of shares, and there’s no end of criticism over changes coming to the site next year.

So what do companies do when they’re being criticised across the board? It’s simple – they explain themselves through a company blog or a similar structure, then make sure to forward it to as many friendly journalists as they can think of. How do they explain this one, then?

Well, Music Business Worldwide posted about this on Monday – quoting a blog post from the company itself. It provided some details which previously hadn’t been reported – for example, the revelation that the 1000 stream minimum threshold could not be reached by one listener just playing the song on a loop until they reached that number.

However, this was the line that really raised eyebrows at the Ears To The House office…

“Because labels and distributors require a minimum amount to withdraw (usually $2-$50 per withdrawal), and banks charge a fee for the transaction (usually $1-$20 per withdrawal), this money often doesn’t reach the uploaders. And these small payments are often forgotten about.”

Spotify’s defence appears to be that, due to factors outside of their own control, the money that they send out will probably not reach the artist at the end. But their fix to the problem that they correctly point out is simply to say they’ll just keep the money for themselves.

“We’ll keep your money in our bank account rather than send it to your bank account to stop you being ripped off” is a bizarre choice of hill to die on…