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Google admits Spotify pays no Play Store fees because of a secret deal | TechCrunch
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this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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...I mean, 30% of the savings go to Spotify, so some part of it will indeed go to stock buybacks and executive salaries. Some of it will go to regular employee salaries, and some of it will go to pay for technical infrastructure, and some of it will go to pay for offices. Some of it will be spent on marketing, even.
70% of it will go to rights holders, though.
Spotify announced stock buybacks in 2021 that were greater in total that they most likely will pay artists in that same timeframe. Doing so artificially depresses the the amount of their revenue that's counted as profit, which is what they use to calculate artist royalties.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/20/spotify-to-spend-1b-buying-its-own-stock/
Again, not true - the royalty payments are based on revenue, not profit.
To understand how absurd the claim that royalty payments are based on profits is, consider that Spotify has had a grand total of two profitable quarters throughout its whole existence - are you seriously claiming that no artist ever got paid outside those two quarters?