Spotify To Start Paying Musicians In Actual Peanuts

Online streaming service, Spotify, has announced plans to alter its artist payment method from reimbursing featured artists in peanuts rather than money.

The Swedish based music site, which has received criticism for its poor remuneration of artists, has said that the plans to switch from money to peanuts “is a natural one” and “is indicative of the esteem with which we hold artists”.

“Artists whose work is featured on Spotify actually make enough money indirectly through having their work popularised by the site,” said Spotify press officer Nathan Berg. “So as well as Spotify advertising artists’ work, those very same ruthless musicians have been selfishly taking the money out of our pockets.”

The company, which is hoping to go public later this year, claims that their current model has saw them lose precious money and “unlike artists [the company] can’t just write new songs or go on a punishing arena tour to make more money” so  they need to cut costs wherever they can in areas like “fairly reimbursing musicians for their hard work”.

“Under the new system we won’t be getting ripped off by artists like we are now,” he stated. “Instead of the current unbalanced and biased system where we have to pay them in cash for the ‘privilege’ of having their songs on the site, we’ll now pay them in peanuts, which is much fairer and cheaper for us.”

“They’ll have all the peanuts they can eat though,” he added. “With any luck the greedy bastards choke on them.”

“We have 6 million paying subscribers and 23 million active users,” he continued, “that’s a lot of exposure for artists so when you think about it, they should be paying us.”

“And not in peanuts,” he joked.

“Hopefully it’ll put them in their place and they won’t be so cheeky about royalty checks,” he added. “Just because they made the music shouldn’t mean we can’t make money off it.”

Artists who have formerly been critical of Spotify, including Four Tet and Thom Yorke, have praised the move from cash payment to peanuts with Four Tet claiming “peanuts are much better than nothing I suppose”, and Thom Yorke in particular lauding the free trade and healthy nature of the peanuts declaring them “very good for your heart” and “lovely with a pint of bitter and some pub crisps”.