We’re not even playing the same game.

Duetti’s 2024 music economics report prompted a nonsensical, fact-free retort from Spotify on Friday, and I’ll bet that was because of these two damning details:

1. Spotify lost a meaningful 2% market share to YouTube, including a 17% shift in electronic music alone in 2024. That’s at odds with the story it tells investors about its runaway growth.

2. Spotify paid 14% less per stream since 2021, even after increasing subscription fees by 20%. That’s at odds with the story it tells artists and labels about the bounty of benefits it provides.

As for its industry-leading, and not in a good way, lowest royalty payments per 1,000 plays, it dared to say:

“No streaming service pays per stream because that approach would incentivise streaming services to minimise streams. It would mean low engagement, fewer artist connections, and lower overall payouts.”

I beg to differ.

Spotify cares about engagement, of course, but it does everything in its power to lower its royalty payments, whether by flooding its service with ghost artists, cutting royalties for artists who opt into Discovery Mode, deeply discounting its premium tier to goose its paid subscriber count, including low-royalty audiobooks in its paid plans, or infinitely more openly hostile policies and programs.

It even disputed “the premise of the report because it is out of step with the reality of how the industry works.”

Those of us paying attention know all too well how it views the industry, especially the artists and fans who should be its primary concern.

I often field questions about how Sawtooth will ever compete with Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, and others. The fact is, we’re not even playing the same game. They’re racing each other to the bottom; we’re zooming away in the other direction.

And I look forward to comparing our numbers when we launch later this year.