Adele tops Spotify in 2011

Soulful British sensation Adele has swept Spotify's year-end charts, appearing in more country-by-country top tens than any other artist. Her album "21" ended the year having sold more than 5 million copies, a feat no U.S. album has achieved since Usher in 2004.

More labels give up on streaming

Dorset-based dance music distributor STHoldings has announced that it is pulling the music content from 238 of the labels it represents off Spotify, Simfy, Rdio and Napster, leaving only four of their clients providing music to the subscription-based music platforms. The company said that "these services cannibalise the revenues of more traditional digital services".

Coldplay avoid Spotify

Coldplay's new album, 'Mylo Xyloto', will not be available on Spotify or most other streaming services, and the reason seems to be to promote conventional record sales. The album will be available as download to owns on iTunes and other online stores and as physical product.

Another label quits Spotify

Another heavy metal has said it is quitting streaming music platform Spotify. Prosthetic Records has followed Century Media and Metal Blade in pulling its content from the Spotify service, with its co-owner EJ Johantgen telling LA Weekly "there [does] not appear to be an upside" to being part of the Spotify party and that payouts are "fractions of pennies". An online debate about Spotify's payments to both labels and songwriters has been initiated by self-releasing indie-folk outfit Uniform Motion based around the royalties they earn on their sound recordings (as both label and recording artist) rather than their publishing (as songwriters). Posting a long blog about the economics of being a DIY artist, they provided some interesting insights into what artists can make from the various digital services - both download and mail-order - and streaming - and the blog led to an online debate comparing the money artists can make 'per download' via services such as iTunes and 'per stream' models such as Spotify. Spotify responded by pointing out the diffence between the two models and saying that they has paid out $100 million to rights owners, that they are the second largest source of digital revenue for European labels. Interestingly, Uniform Motion has since noted on their blog that their problem with Spotify and other streaming services isn't so much how much they get paid per stream, but rather how that fee relates to what the streaming firms earn for ad sales and subscriptions. They say: "What we dislike about Spotify, is the lack of transparency in their business model. With Apple, it's simple. They take 30%. With Spotify, we don't know if we're getting a fair deal or not".

Spotify profit due?

Spotify is due to report a profit when it publishes its 2010 results later this year. The online streaming service with 1.9 million paying users and 6 million free users in the US and Europe turned over an estimated E59 million and paid out E45 million to record labels. No details are known about music publisher payments, but with some E10 million spent on marketing and business overheads, a profit of E5 million could be achieved, against a loss of around E20 million last year on turnover of just E13 million in 2009. Spotify is now looking to shift users from the now restricted free service to paid for subscription services.