As Detailed by Billboard, Spotify will significantly change its royalty structure in 2024. The most significant changes are three main items: 1) If a track generates less than 1,000 plays in a year, that artist/rights holder will receive no payout(Spotify claims those micro-payments will then be distributed into the larger royalty pool); 2) Labels and distributors will be fined roughly $90 for any track that is determined to have 90% or higher fraudulent streams (streams played by non-humans for the purpose of generating income); 3) Non-music noise tracks must now be at least two minutes long in order to qualify for royalties and each play will count for one-fifth of a music track’s stream.

Spotify states that this move is due to the fact that a significant portion of money for non-popular tracks never makes it to the end party since digital distributors will hold back payments until the payout reaches a certain number. Since spotify pays roughly between $0.003 - $0.005 per stream, it is likely most distributors hold back payments for tracks that do not even stream 1,000 plays per year.

Interestingly, this apparently will mean 2/3 of tracks on Spotify will never get a payout because most tracks on spotify receive no plays or very few plays- a number of tracks on spotify are even artificially generated for the purpose of making money off "autoplay." Spotify estimates that about $40 million that would have been paid to the non-popular tracks will be shifted to the remaining artists. Spotify adds that the demonetization represents only .5% of money that would have been paid out, not being paid out, under the old model.