SPOTIFY Responds To CENTURY MEDIA RECORDS

On Tuesday, Century Media and its associated labels InsideOutMusic, Superballmusic and People Like Youannounced that they had decided to pull their repertoire from streaming music service Spotify in an attempt "to protect the interests of their artists." Now, Spotify has issued a statement to Digital Music News responding to that removal, as well as broader claims that its service undercuts rights holders.

"We are sorry that Century Media have opted not to offer its music to their fans through Spotify," Spotify said. "Spotify has one of the biggest music libraries in the world of over 15 million tracks - and is committed to offering our users the widest possible selection of music across artists and genres from around the world.

"Spotify was launched out of a desire to develop a better, more convenient and legal alternative to music piracy. Spotify now monetizes an audience the large majority of whom were downloading illegally (and therefore not making any money for the industry) before Spotify was available.

"Spotify is now generating serious revenues for rights holders; since our launch just three years ago, we have paid over $100 million to labels and publishers, who, in turn, pass this on to the artists, composers and authors they represent. Indeed, a top Swedish music executive was recently quoted as saying that Spotify is currently the biggest single revenue source for the music industry in Scandinavia.

"Spotify is now also the second single largest source of digital music revenue for labels in Europe (IFPI, April 2011). Billboard reported in April that Spotify territories saw an average digital growth rate of 43% last year. By contrast, neighbouring countries (without Spotify) saw only 9.3% digital growth.

"We are very proud of the positive contribution that Spotify makes towards growth in the music industry."

The U.S. version of Spotify, which gives its users access to all the songs in its cloud to organize into playlists and listen to as they please, has reportedly attracted 1.4 million registered users so far in spite of its current invite-only status. Of those users, roughly 175,000 are said to be "paying users." In Europe, where Spotify has been available in seven countries since its launch in 2008, the company currently has around 1.6 million paying users, according to published reports.

According to the an infographic on the Information Is Beautiful web site, which visualizes the different monetization methods available to artists and how profitable they are, if you are a solo musician, at $0.00029 per play on Spotify, you will have to receive 4,053,110 plays per month to earn the U.S. minimum wage of $1,160.