Bots, AI, and Low $ Per Stream — What Spotify’s Policy Head Told Me

I sat down with Spotify's Head of Marketing and Policy (Sam Duboff) to ask him some of my most common comments and questions about bots, AI-generated music, and the low payouts per stream compared to Apple Music, Amazon, and YouTube music and how Spotify's new bundled service affects mechanical royalties and the royalty pool.

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Chapters
0:00 Who is Sam Duboff from Spotify?
1:30 What is the Marketing and Policy Team for Spotify for Artists?
3:02 What is Spotify doing to make the industry fairer for smaller artists?
9:39 How many releases and monthly listeners does Spotify want to see?
13:52 Why does Spotify have a lower revenue per stream compared to Apple Music, Amazon Music, and other DSPs?
18:20 Has Spotify considered alternative music revenue models?
21:32 Does the revenue sharing model pay artists more than the current royalty pool model?
23:53 How has piracy affected the direction of Spotify's streaming policies?
26:33 How does streaming revenue compare to the CD era of the music industry?
28:33 How much Spotify revenue goes to independent artists and labels?
30:27 What will Spotify do about AI Music competing against human artists?
37:16 Does Spotify block the mass upload of AI music?
38:03 New Spotify video features being introduced on the platform
40:12 Where does Spotify fit inside the bigger picture of social media?
41:11 What is Spotify currently doing to prevent Bots and artificial streaming on the platform?
43:51 The most significant artificial streaming fraud lawsuit in the history of music
45:07 How to protect against artificial streaming scams & bot playlist services?
47:01 How good is Spotify at detecting artificial streaming?
49:03 Does Spotify remove fake playlists that use bots from the platform?
51:20 How fast does Spotify remove fake streams and bot plays from Spotify for Artists?
53:37 Does audiobook bundling on Spotify Premium take away royalties from musicians?
56:49 Responding to the MLC lawsuit against Spotify bundling their subscription
57:45 Bundling only affects one royalty, not the rest of the Spotify Royalty Pool
1:00:53 Spotify is making direct deals with publishers now to bypass the government-set rates, resulting in better deals for songwriters
1:02:56 Final thoughts