Gareth Emery: “I couldn't rely on Spotify for an income"

Spotify has recently filed to raise $1 billion in a modified IPO process. With over 160 million active users and private investors valuing the company as high as $23 billion, it is suspected that the company will start trading publicly later this month.

Gareth Emery, the successful UK DJ who has sold over 5 million records worldwide and clocks in over a million Spotify streams a month, had some choice words for the platform - criticizing it’s treatment of artists and lashing out at their at the secrecy that surrounds the company.

“In Spotify’s IPO filing, it states its original aim was to reimagine the music industry for the better for both artists and consumers”, says Emery. “However, talking from the point of view of an artist with over a million monthly listeners on the platform, this hasn’t turned out to be the case. Spotify has always been run for the benefit of the major record labels – all of which are shareholders - whilst artists get crumbs from the table.”

Emery goes into further detail about the company’s method of paying out artists, Emery stated: “The whole system is cloaked in secrecy, nobody knows how much they’re going to get paid or when. It can take over a year to get paid for a stream, and up to two years. Even with over a million listeners, and tens of millions of streams, I couldn't rely on Spotify for an income - so it blows my mind how smaller artists are supposed to manage?"

To combat this issue which he feels so passionately about, Gareth Emery has gone on to create his own streaming platform named Choon, a music ecosystem which uses a Ethereum blockchain to help solve “the music industry’s most fundamental problems”.

“Whilst I'm sure the IPO will be a fantastically profitable day for venture capitalists, Spotify shareholders and major record labels, you won't find much celebration from artists themselves, who once again find themselves at the back of the line for payment of their work after the music industry monopolies have cashed in. It's madness."

Not everyone is getting scammed by Spotify. Just last month, a Bulgarian playlist maker managed to take over $1 million dollars from Spotify without partaking in a single illegal act.

Check out Gareth Emery's time in the LAB London here