{"id":52992,"date":"2018-11-19T15:55:50","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T15:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=52992"},"modified":"2018-11-20T11:31:43","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T11:31:43","slug":"universal-will-ignore-artists-unrecouped-balances-when-it-pays-out-spotify-share-money-thanks-to-taylor-swift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/universal-will-ignore-artists-unrecouped-balances-when-it-pays-out-spotify-share-money-thanks-to-taylor-swift\/","title":{"rendered":"Universal will ignore artists’ unrecouped balances when it pays out Spotify share money… thanks to Taylor Swift"},"content":{"rendered":"

Universal Music Group is yet to sell any of its Spotify shares which, according to MBW’s calculations, are currently worth around $850m<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That’s led to much discussion in the artist community about what will happen when UMG does bank its 3.5% stake in the streaming company.<\/p>\n

One question has been asked louder than any other: will Universal follow the lead of Sony Music<\/a> and pay its artists a share of this cash<\/a> without<\/em> withholding money owed by their individual unrecouped balances?<\/p>\n

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Today (November 19), we got our answer, courtesy of Taylor Swift.<\/p>\n

Writing on Instagram<\/a> to announce her new deal with UMG<\/a>, Swift wrote: “There was one condition which meant more to me than any other deal point. As part of my new contract with Universal Music Group, I asked that any sale of their Spotify shares result in a distribution of money to their artists, non-recoupable.”<\/p>\n

“As part of my new contract with Universal Music Group, I asked that any sale of their Spotify shares result in a distribution of money to their artists, non-recoupable.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She added: “They have generously agreed to this, at what they believe will be much better terms than paid out previously by other major labels. I see this as a sign that we are headed towards positive change for creators \u2013 a goal I’m never going to stop trying to help to achieve, in whatever ways I can. I’m so happy to have Sir Lucian Grainge as a partner in these efforts.”<\/p>\n

In the same post, Swift confirmed that, as part of her new UMG deal, she will retain ownership of the masters of her future recordings.<\/p>\n

Sony announced in June that it would be dismissing any individual unrecouped artist balances when it came to paying out proceeds from its 5.7% Spotify stake.<\/p>\n

Since then, Sony has sold 50% of this stake<\/a>, banking $768m in total.<\/p>\n

Warner Music Group, meanwhile, announced in August that it had sold its entire Spotify stake for gross proceeds of $504m.<\/p>\n

WMG handed 25% of this money to its artist accounts, but did not ignore their unrecouped balances<\/a> \u2013 meaning that a significant proportion of this cash actually remained at WMG.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the first time that Taylor Swift has been credited with working magic on behalf of the wider artist community: in 2015, she publicly called on Apple to compensate artists<\/a> for music played by Apple Music users during their free trial of the service.<\/p>\n

Apple’s Eddy Cue later announced that the company was bowing to Swift’s request.<\/p>\n

[Pictured: UMG’s Sir Lucian Grainge, Taylor Swift and Republic’s Monte Lipman via Swift’s Instagram account.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘They have generously agreed to this, at what they believe will be much better terms than paid out previously by other major labels.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":52993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[322,2964,483],"class_list":["post-52992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-monte-lipman","tag-sir-lucian-grainge","tag-taylor-swift"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}