Blue Music Group withdraws music from Spotify

Independent jazz and classical label Blue Music Group has pulled all its music from Spotify, calling the streaming service’s rates “pitiful”.

“Having the catalog available at Spotify’s pitiful rates – and we’re talking about fractions of cents per streamed song – kills all chances to produce new fruitful music,” said Mika Pohjola, Founder of Blue Music Group, in a statement published on BMG’s official website.

The label, which specialises in Scandinavian music, withdrew its catalogue today after almost six years on Spotify. Blue Music Group artist Johanna Grüssner hit one million streams on Spotify with her 2006 LP Swedish Traditional Songs.

“Blue Music Group is keen to pay its artists fairly, we have one of the highest royalty rates in the industry,” continued Pohjola “We rely on people buying our downloads from Apple iTunes, Amazon or Bandcamp. These vendors, especially Bandcamp, gives a straight-forward deal on downloads, and they understand musicians need to get paid.”

According to Spotify’s website for artists (SpotifyArtists.com), the service distributes “nearly 70% of all the revenues that we receive back to rights holders.” However that almost 70/30 split is dependent on the artist’s popularity or ‘market share’ of their music on Spotify; the artist’s label or publisher then pays the artist in accordance to the current contract for royalty rates.

According to Spotify, independent artists can keep up to 100% of their royalty payouts by paying a fee to use one of its seven aggregator partners like CDBaby, Tunecore or Phonofile.

Pohjola said he may consider returning BMG’s music to streaming services when the royalty split is more balanced: “Most artists suffer from Spotify eating up their download sales,” he said. “Maybe in the future, when the deal is fair toward artists and producers, we can consider Spotify and other streaming services again.”