Do artists get paid for offline listening?

[Trstn]

I download all my music that I don't pay for (streaming) to my phone, because who wants to constantly use data.

I'm also a music producer with content on streaming services. Am I getting paid for offline listens for the millions of people who might stream things once, but then download it to their phones?

I can't find an answer to this anywhere online. I would only assume no, cause how could you track offline listens, but I hope I'm wrong. If it's a no, what are the future plans to fix this for Artists?

Thanks.

[Maxim · Accepted solution]

Hey @Trstn,

I believe that artists do get paid, even when the listener is always listening to their songs in offline mode.

Spotify probably tracks how many times a song's been played, and when the app's back online, it 'uploads it to the server'.

Hope this helps!

[El0h1m]

Today's mobile plans are so good ... don't need to go offline - here in the UK (giffgaff).

But yes... Spotify will upload all your stream numbers once you online again.

[johnnormanmusic]

Ok excellent. Artists get paid for offline listening in the way of plays... but I think there is another, almost more important question in there that doesn't seem to be answered...

Are artists and/or songwriters getting paid $0.091 every time the song is SAVED for offline listening? Technically speaking... this should be a completely different royalty being paid out.

Unless we have found a way to defy the laws of physics, one thing cannot actually be in two places at the same time. So with that said, in order to "save" something for offline use, a copy has to have been made. Copyright law states that when a copy of music is made, a mechanical royalty is generated; generally $0.091. This royalty is to be paid directly to the songwriter, the songwriters publisher, or to an appointed Agency where the publisher/songwriter can collect it from. In this case, it's likely Harry Fox.

But the question remains... is Spotify actually paying out this royalty?

[gabrieleqcq]

What if I download songs, go offline, listen to the songs one zillion times, then before going back online I delete my local storage?

[DJRX78]

Hey Maxim!

You believing Spotify pays artists isn't Spotify OFFICIALLY announcing that artists get paid for downloaded offline music.

It's bad enough that streams only pay fractions of pennies overall, but the fact that there is no indication from Spotify anywhere that downloads/offline listening is incredibly problematic. This is essentially saying that if people wanted to get music off Apple, Amazon, etc., and they had a subscription for streaming, they would pay $0 for any of that.

For you as a consumer, that sounds nice, but for artists like myself, that sounds like theft. 

Many musical artists rely on income to pay for bills such as their living expenses, food so they can live, the equipment that helps them make more music, the platforms that allow them to upload music to streaming in the first place, and more. When platforms like Spotify find ways to dodge paying artists, they're denying them important financial support for them to do what they do best. 

This is why I primarily use Bandcamp because they actually support indie artists! 

Because of sales from one of my albums, I was able to afford a used laptop and a new printer. The used laptop was meant to be a temporary stand in while I tried to save up for a new laptop because my old one which I made all my music on was too old to function anymore. It's old enough to still play CDs and DVDs if you're old enough to remember what those are. The new printer was something I needed for a long time so that I could finally start working on artists projects like comic books. The specific printer I got has a large enough scanning bed to handle 11 x 17 pages, which are common size for comic book art boards used for drawing the original art. Now I hear you wanting to say "Well if you have a job, you could have got one anyway", but I'll push back. I try my best to save as much of my money for my living expenses and bills, and putting away money into my emergency fund. If I just wasted all my income from my job away just because I had money from work, I would for sure be broke. Having the extra income helps me afford things without hurting what I bring in for my necessary expenses. 

Though for some people, music is all they have to pay the bills, so when Spotify doesn't pay enough, that's hurting them. 

Having it where only the most popular receive the most money, the most attention, the most perks, etc. essentially is saying that Spotify doesn't value or even cares about whether someone can earn a living with music. They only care how easy it is for you to pay a subscription and listen to as much music as possible. I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate it if what you do for work suddenly dropped to to 1% of what you might have made before just because the business said they wanted to make costs less expensive and easier to access for their customers or clients. You would be furious and you would scrambling to figure out how to pay your bills. 

So again, just because you believe it to be true, doesn't mean it is. This isn't the Santa Clause with Tim Allen. 

PAY MUSICAL ARTISTS BETTER SPOTIFY!