Spotify Not Happy With Eternify Protest App
Christopher Files / 9 years ago
The ability to stream a vast array of music straight to a device has grown immensely in recent times, but in doing so has irritated artists who claim to receive a small percentage of royalties in return. To highlight this, an electronic pop band by the name of “Ohm & Sport”, whose name sounds as if a Cambridge University student has just won 44 points playing Scrabble, has invented an App which plays any song on repeat for 30 seconds.
The App is called Eternify and is a direct demonstration against the paying structure of royalties by music streaming site Spotify. The App artificially generates royalties by meeting Spotify’s minimum time with which a song has to be played for it to be classed as a listened to song, in this case 30 seconds. The App also makes handy use of Spotify’s public API – Application Programming Interface which assists App developers to incorporate the streaming site’s impressive archive.
As a protest this App worked very nicely, the band requested fans play Ohm & Sports new album on repeat while they snoozed, the results garnered around $20,000 (£12,700) in royalties. Spotify Spotted this and removed the album and stated this App may have violated the terms and conditions of the site.
The App has highlighted a growing resentment towards streaming sites from artists who believe Spotify is imposing to small royalty fee. I do think there needs to be cooperation between both parties if streaming is to flourish, otherwise we will be in groundhog day for many more times to come.
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Image courtesy of ImoveiLive