Drake has called on Spotify to pay artists bonuses as a reward for reaching milestones on the platform.
The Toronto rapper took to his Instagram Stories on Wednesday (February 1) to celebrate becoming the first artist in Spotify history to surpass 75 billion streams.
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But instead of reveling in his continued dominance, Drizzy was more concerned about his fellow artists getting paid generously for bringing users to the streaming service.
“We should get bonuses like athletes to motivate the future artists to be consistent and competitive,” he wrote. “So feel free to send me a LeBron sized cheque I have enough dinner plates @spotify.”
Spotify’s most-streamed artist of the 2010s, Drake boasts some of the biggest singles of all time on the platform, with “One Dance” and “God’s Plan” both sitting on over two billion streams each.
His joint album with 21 Savage, Her Loss, surpassed one billion Spotify streams in December, less than two months after its November 4 release. In doing so, Drake set a new record for the most albums to cross the billions streams mark on Spotify with 12.
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According to Ditto Music, Spotify currently pays artists between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream on average, with 70 percent of revenue going to the artist/rights holders and 30 percent to Spotify.
Many artists have been critical of streaming platforms and their royalty payments over the years. In December 2021, T-Pain shared a post claiming it would take 315 streams of a song on Spotify to make just $1, alongside the ratio of other streaming services.
“I see a lot of ‘well I guess I’ll use the best one’ and not ‘we gotta make our own’ keep in mind,” he wrote on Twitter. “most artists don’t even get the whole $1. I’m just letting the up and coming know what the real is. I worked for mine and there are tons of ways around this if you move right.”
In February last year, R&B singer India Arie removed her music from Spotify in protest against Joe Rogan’s history of racially insensitive comments and the amount of money he receives from his podcast deal compared to what artists are paid.
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“I have decided to pull my music and podcast from Spotify,” she wrote. “Neil Young opened a door that I MUST walk through. I believe in freedom of speech. However, I find Joe Rogan problematic for reasons OTHER than his Covid interviews… FOR ME ITS ALSO HIS language around race.
“What I am talking about is RESPECT – who gets it and who doesn’t. Paying musicians a fraction of a penny and HIM $100M? This shows the type of company they are and the company that they keep. I’m tired.”
