Spotify Royalties Overtake iTunes Earnings in Europe

Spotify royalties have overtaken iTunes Earnings in Europe, according to Kobalt, a company that helps collect royalties on behalf of thousands of artists.

The company receives royalties on behalf of "half of this week’s Billboard Top 10" and musicians like Maroon 5, Lenny Kravitz, Dave Grohl, Max Martin, Bob Dylan, and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, notes TechCrunch. Kobalt says that in the last quarter in Europe, revenues for its customers from Spotify streams were 13% higher on average than revenues from Apple’s iTunes.

Those figures support a recent Neilsen report that found on-demand music streaming was up 42% over last year and digital track sales were down 13%.


“Spotify overtaking iTunes in Europe is an important new milestone in streaming,” Kobalt CEO Willart Ahdritz says. “The music industry’s infrastructure is failing them, unable to efficiently account for the enormous volumes of data from digital transactions.”



Kobalt also notes that streaming services as of Q2 2014 account for 10% of all publishing income for its clients in Europe.

To counter the threat from streaming music services, Apple has acquired Beats Music and it is reportedly working to rebuild the service and relaunch it next year as part of iTunes.


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