Spotify is set to raise prices for its Premium Duo, Premium Family and Student plans in the UK and Europe from the end of this month for new users and starting from June 2021 for existing subscribers. In the US, Spotify will be raising only the monthly price of Premium Family, the Verge reports.

UK:

Student — £4.99 ➡️ £5.99 (+£1)
Duo — £12.99 ➡️ £13.99 (+£1)
Family — £14.99 ➡️ £16.99 (+£2)

EU:

Student — €4.99 ➡️ €5.99 (+€1)
Duo — €11.99 ➡️ €12.99 (+€1)
Family — €14.99 ➡️ €17.99 (+€3)

US:

Family — $14.99 ➡️ $15.99 (+$1)

Apple Music has published last week that their average per play rate is $0.01, which is roughly double what Spotify pays the artists. But it's not that simple - MBW and Trapital explain Apple Music's and Spotify's models, their reach, the number of users, and how much exactly they pay to the labels (not directly to the artists, actually). Variety also points out, with word of an unnamed executive, that the best option is "a lot of users streaming a lot of music”, which would in return mean a lower per-stream rate. For example, if one artist were racking up a high percentage of streams on a less-popular streaming service, their per-stream rate would be quite high — but they’d actually have fewer streams than they would on a site with more users. Spotify has an industry-leading 155 million paying subscribers and 345 million active users, according to its most recent report, while Apple last reported more than 60 million Music subscribers in June 2019.

The music streaming giant has stepped into music listening hardware business - Spotify is launching a smart device for the car called the Car Thing. The new voice-controlled device, which only works with a Spotify Premium account, will let users say “Hey Spotify” to ask for a song, album, artist, playlist, station, or podcast. It also features a dial to browse, select, play and pause content, a 4″ touchscreen and four preset buttons for shortcuts to user's favorite artists, playlists, stations, and podcasts. The device connects to Spotify’s app on a smartphone and connects to the car stereo via Bluetooth, AUX or USB cable, TechCrunch reports. Initially available for select US users, the new gadget’s anticipated retail price is $79.99, but is available at no cost for a limited time for those select users, with SPOT only charging $6.99 postage.

Spotify announced the acquisition of Betty Labs, the creators of Locker Room, a live audio app focused on sports talk, with the aim to build its own rival to the buzzy Clubhouse live-audio chat app, MBW reports. Spotify’s deal values Betty Labs at around $50 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. Betty Labs first launched Locker Room for sports fans in October 2020. Spotify said it plans to rebrand the app (but keep it separate) to “evolve and expand” Locker Room into an enhanced live audio experience for a wider range of creators and fans, offering sports, music, and cultural programming along with interactive features that enable creators to connect with listeners in real time.

An interesting statistic in the MBW about the potential to earn an average wage as a musician, as opposed to a footballer. Spotify announced this week that 13,400 artists generated over $50,000 each in royalty payouts (records plus publishing) from their platform in 2020. There are now somewhere around 7 million artists with their music on Spotify, which means just 0.2% of artists on Spotify are generating $50k per year (median annual US wage). On the other side, there are around 320 million footballers today, and, by FIFA numbers, 128,983 of them actually get paid (something) to play, which is 0.04% of them.

Spotify has launched a new website – Loud & Clear – with plenty of information about money generated on the streaming platform. In 2020, some 13,400 acts generated total payments in excess of $50,000 around the world, double the number of artists who generated over $50k in payments from Spotify in 2017 (7,300). Also, L&C shows that 7,800 artists generated $100k-plus in 2020, the $500k-plus-per-year club counted 1,820 artists in 2020, and the $1 million-plus-per-year club counted 870 artists in 2020. Generated is important here - it's the amount made by the artist's music, and that amount is being split by the artist and the publisher, with the big chunk (85% or so) going to the publisher. As of 2020, Spotify has paid over $23 billion in royalties to rights holders — including over $5 billion in 2020 alone, up from $3.3 billion in 2017.

The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers organized protests outside Spotify’s offices in 31 cities in the US and Canada, South America, Australia, Europe, and Asia on Monday, Clash Magazine reports. The peaceful demonstrations were meant to draw attention to the “Justice at Spotify” list of demands, which includes paying artists one cent per stream (Spotify currently pays some artists as little as $0.0038 per stream, which is among the lowest rates of any platform), plus transparent contracts, a more user-centric payment model, an end to payola, a switch to crediting all labor in recordings, and an end to legal battles against artists which serve to “further impoverish artists”.

Routenote brings the numbers in - lists the ten largest music streaming services by number of tracks in their catalogue. The undisputable No. 1 is SoundCloud with 200 million songs, Deezer follows with 72 million songs, while the next five - Apple Music, Tidal, Spotify, Amazon, Qobuz - host around 70 million songs each. Napster follows with 60 million, while YouTube Music and KKBOX round up the Top 10 with 50 million songs each.

Spotify CEO and cofounder Daniel Ek said the company paid out $5 billion in royalties in 2020, Spotify reports. Chief content officer Dawn Ostroff announced that over the last four years, the number of recording artists whose catalogs generated more than $1 million a year across recording and publishing is up over 82% to more than 800 artists (the majority of money is still going to the labels), and the number generating more than $100,000 a year is up 79% to more than 7,500 artists. Spotify this week also announced that it will be introducing a hi-fi option later this year.

Across the course of this year, approximately 22 million tracks will be added to Spotify’s catalog, which is approximately 60,000 tracks per day, meaning a new track is uploaded to its platform every 1.4 seconds, Music Business Worldwide reports. Spotify confirmed in November last year that its platform played host to around 70 million tracks.