This is interesting: Sony says three-quarters of a billion dollars will be distributed to artists
Sony had a big stake in Spotify when the streamer was still a private company, meanwhile that when Spotify had its successful IPO, Sony saw its share equity balloon.
Once the dust settled, Sony sold a chunk of its shares for a profit of around $750 million. And in an interesting announcement, that money will be distributed to artists.
From Variety:
Sony Music has begun to distribute the $750 million in profit it collected from the April sale of 50% of its Spotify shares to the artists and distributed labels within the Sony system, Variety has confirmed. As previously reported, Sony, which held 5.7% of Spotify’s stock when the streaming service went public, will not count the funds against the artists’ and label’s unrecouped earnings.
Rather, the “Spotify windfall,” as SME insiders are calling the disbursement, will be apportioned according to individual artist and label contract terms and based on earnings over the last 10 years — or since Sony’s initial investment in the Swedish streaming upstart — divisible against Sony’s own revenues from the Spotify stock gain for that time period.
What does this mean to the thousands of artists, representatives and some two million titles involved? The checks are in the mail, and set to arrive by the end of August.
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