An indie musician is accusing Spotify of engaging in “undisclosed, unfair, and deceptive business practices” that pay smaller artists less.
In a recent lawsuit filed against the Swedish streamer, Mark Kratter, a Connecticut-based musician, accused Spotify of employing “opaque rules and undisclosed filtering criteria that disproportionately harm independent artists” and in turn benefit “major labels and high-volume catalogs.”
The complaint, filed in Stamford, Conn., alleges that Spotify’s streaming policies shortchange artists by “filtering legitimate listening activity, failing to count key engagement signals, suppressing algorithmic discovery, and imposing a 1,000-stream minimum threshold before any royalties are paid.”
The lawsuit states that in March the company implemented a change to its streaming algorithm that directly affected Kratter’s streaming numbers.
Before these changes, Kratter’s Spotify streams were “stable and consistent,” meaning that counted streams were proportional to listener activity, the complaint alleges.
But since March, his listening data “shows a sharp and measurable decline in counted streams, despite continued listener activity,” the complaint states. The lawsuit specifically said Kratter’s profile data shows that listener activity on the platform, including saves and playlist additions, exceeded counted streams.
Spotify first implemented its 1,000-stream policy in 2024. This means that in order for a song to be eligible for royalty payouts, it needs to hit 1,000 streams on the platform. When introducing this regulation, the company said in a statement that tracks with fewer than 1,000 streams generated an average of only three cents per month.
“99.5% of all streams are of tracks that have at least 1,000 annual streams, and each of those tracks will earn more under this policy,” the company said.
Spotify declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The streamer has said previously that it paid more than $11 billion to the music industry in 2025. Nearly 14,000 artists earned $100,000 in Spotify royalties alone last year, and independent artists and labels accounted for about half of all payments, according to the streamer.
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