Universal Music Group (UMG), the music-based entertainment and Spotify, the audio streaming subscription service announced new, multi-year agreements for Recorded Music and Music Publishing.
Under the new agreements, UMG and Spotify will collaborate closely to advance the next era of streaming innovation. Artists, songwriters and consumers will benefit from new and evolving offers, new paid subscription tiers, bundling of music and non-music content, and a richer audio and visual content catalog.
The new publishing agreement establishes a direct license between Spotify and Universal Music Publishing Group across Spotify’s current product portfolio in the U.S. and several other countries, which reinforces a mutually beneficial relationship for songwriters on the platform.
Lucian Grainge, Chairman & CEO, Universal Music Group said, “When we first presented our vision for the next stage in the evolution of music subscription several months ago—Steaming 2.0—this is precisely the kind of partnership development we envisioned. This agreement furthers and broadens the collaboration with Spotify for both our labels and music publisher, advancing artist-centric principles to drive greater monetization for artists and songwriters, as well as enhancing product offerings for consumers.”
Daniel Ek, Spotify’s Founder and CEO, said, “For nearly two decades, Spotify has made good on its commitment to return the music industry to growth, ensuring that we deliver record payouts to the benefit of artists and songwriters each new year. This partnership ensures we can continue to deliver on this promise by embracing the certainty that constant innovation is key to making paid music subscriptions even more attractive to a broader audience of fans around the world.”
