Billboard have delved into the dispute between Victory Records and digital music streaming giant Spotify that saw the label’s catalog removed from the service. Earlier today, October 19th, Victory issued this statement, explaining their side of the matter. The label had alleged that various royalties had not been paid. They backed up their findings via audits conducted by digital monitoring service Audiam done on behalf of Victory. According to the audits, the label is due an estimated $23,000 for nearly 2,200 songs that were not correctly paid. As per Billboard‘s report:
“Using Spotify‘s royalty statements on Victory Records‘ master recordings, and comparing those statements from 2012 through September 2015 against publishing royalty statements made to Another Victory over the same period, Audiam found that, of the 3,245 recordings that Another Victory holds a stake in, only 1,062 had received payment from Spotify. That leaves 2,183 songs in which Another Victory has a publishing stake but that did not receive mechanical royalty payments, accounting for 53 million total streams for those songs.
Billboard estimates that, at a blended mechanical rate for the ad-supported and premium services of $0.00043 per stream, the amount left unpaid comes to nearly $23,000.
Spotify tells Billboard they are working to resolve the issue.
While some suggest that the removal of portions of Victory‘s catalog from Spotify was due to the streaming service becoming nervous over possible legal ramifications, others speculate that Spotify could be taking punitive action against the label by ending the flow of payments on the removed songs. Since the records Spotify removed also include those not owned by Another Victory, the removal also damages RED, Victory’s distributor — thus impacting Sony Music Entertainment, RED’s parent company.
Many of the services have valuations in the hundreds of million and even billions of dollars, Victory’s Brummel says, but they forget that “without the content, they are worth nothing. They need our content to get their high valuations… Yet without music, what is Spotify worth? So are they saying their users are valuable but the music is nothing?”
Making matters worse, the services “aren’t doing anything to fix the hole in the dike” Brummel adds. “We are not looking to go to war with anyone. We want to be [treated] fairly; not like indentured servants.”
Before Spotify pulled down Victory’s music, it tried to get Another Victory to do a direct license with it. But since Victory already had a contract with Audiam that included a letter of direction to Spotify to pay Audiam for Another Victory publishing, Brummel says he couldn’t consider that option.”
There’s a lot more details to be gleamed on the matter over at Billboard.