‘Songwriter of the Year’ nominees to boycott Spotify’s Grammy party
Songwriters nominated for the ‘Songwriter of the Year’ category at the Grammy Awards are set to boycott a Spotify event centred around the ceremony.
The Grammys will take place on February 2nd in Los Angeles, but Spotify will host an event on January 28th ahead of the awards. According to Billboard, Raye, Amy Allen, Jessi Alexander, and Jessi Jo Dillon, who are all nominated for ‘Songwriter of the Year’, will not attend the party due to the streaming platform’s treatment of songwriters.
Dillon and Alexander have cited Spotify’s decision to bundle audiobooks with premium packages for subscribers as a key reason for their refusal to attend. This move is reportedly set to cost songwriters $150 million in royalties within 12 months.
In a statement, Dillon, who has helped pen hits such as Morgan Wallen’s ‘Lies Lies Lies’, explained, “After some thought, I couldn’t in good conscience support this initiative given their approach to bundling royalties. It is very nice to be individually honored, but it is better for me and my entire songwriter community to be paid fairly for our art. There are no songs without songwriters.”
Meanwhile, a representative for Raye told Billboard that “there’s nothing for her to back out of at present” but says she is “an outspoken advocate on behalf of songwriters’ rights igniting an industry-wide dialogue on the topic.”
During her acceptance speech at the Brit Awards in 2024, Raye used the platform to demand a better deal for songwriters, stating, “British music industry, please — I want to have a lovely, brief conversation about normalising giving songwriters master royalty points.”
She added, “It means if the songs win big, the writers get to win too. Please allow that to happen — please.”
Last year, after hiking user subscription prices, Spotify registered record profits. Additionally, the number of monthly active users rose by 14 per cent to reach 626 million.
In November, English singer-songwriter Kate Nash protested outside Spotify’s headquarters and criticised the Swedish tech company for paying artists 0.0003p per stream and noted that 80 per cent of music on the platform is demonetised due to having less than 1,000 streams.
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