Spotify's New Terms Of Service - Is It Bad?
Spotify’s updated Terms of Service apply only to user-uploaded content like playlist art and profile pictures, not to the music itself. Misinterpretations have caused unnecessary concern among artists about AI training and unauthorized use of their songs.
By Andrew Southworth
Hey friends!
Today we’re going to talk about Spotify’s new Terms of Service.
But why are we talking about something so boring? Well, several viral social media posts have been going around claiming that Spotify is going to train AI with your music, re-sell new versions of your song without your permission or paying you, and plenty of other nefarious things.
All of these posts are misinformation. In this post i’m going to prove it to you, because i’ve had to correct like 10 people about this in the past week alone. There are artists literally pulling their music off of the platform for this reason.
If you want to pull your music from Spotify be my guest, but at least do it for something accurate and not made up.
But the TLDR is: The changes to Spotify’s Terms of Service aren’t anything to panic about, and they don’t apply to your music anyways.
Spotify’s User Terms Of Service
On August 26th Spotify updated their user terms of service, which you can find here. In this document Spotify lists out the agreement between users of Spotify and the platform.
Many people focused on this section:
Licenses that you grant to us
User Content
You retain ownership of your User Content when you post it to the Spotify Service. However, in order for us to make your User Content available on the Spotify Service and to provide you with certain features and functions, we do need a limited license from you to that User Content. Accordingly, you hereby grant to Spotify a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free, fully paid, irrevocable, worldwide license to reproduce, make available, perform and display, translate, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, and otherwise use any such User Content through any medium, whether alone or in combination with other Content or materials, in any manner and by any means, method or technology, whether now known or hereafter created, in connection with the Spotify Service. Where applicable and to the extent permitted under applicable law, you also agree to waive, and not to enforce, any "moral rights" or equivalent rights, such as your right to be identified as the author of any User Content, including Feedback, and your right to object to derogatory treatment of such User Content.
This sounds scary, but language almost identical to this exists on YouTube, Apple Music, Instagram etc. However there is one VERY important point you need to understand.
This entire agreement is for Users of the platform, and does not apply to music on Spotify.
Yep. This particular clause is really only applicable to data like playlist cover art, profile picture artwork etc. Stuff that listeners upload to Spotify. Also on another note, the language is almost identical if you look back at the 2015 agreement.
You grant Spotify a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, perpetual (or, in jurisdictions where this is not permitted, for a term equal to the duration of the Agreements plus twenty (20) years), irrevocable, fully paid, worldwide licence to use, reproduce, make available to the public (e.g. perform or display), publish, translate, modify, create derivative works from, and distribute any of your User Content in connection with the Service through any medium, whether alone or in combination with other content or materials, in any manner and by any means, method or technology, whether now known or hereafter created. Aside from the rights specifically granted herein, you retain ownership of all rights, including intellectual property rights, in the User Content. Where applicable and permitted under applicable law, you also agree to waive any “moral rights” (or the equivalent under applicable law) such as your right to be identified as the author of any User Content, including Feedback, and your right to object to derogatory treatment of such User Content.
But again, this license does not apply to your music.
What does it apply to though? Specifically playlist cover art, profile pictures etc. But definitely not music.
Spotify For Artists User TOS
Next, there is actually a 2nd terms of service for Spotify for Artists which you can find here. This particular agreement applies to content uploaded to Spotify For Artists.
Some people have tried to claim that it’s actually THIS agreement that changed and is why they’re upset. But again this is also misinformation. First of all, this TOS has been the same since 2021.
Secondly, across both of these terms of service Spotify makes a very clear distinction between ‘Content’ and ‘User Content’. Content applies to music, audiobooks etc on the platform, and ‘User Content’ is stuff uploaded directly to the platform.
Here’s what that agreement says:
By posting User Content to the Service, you, on behalf of your Subscribing Entity, grant Spotify a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, fully paid, worldwide license to reproduce, make available, perform and display, translate, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, and otherwise use such User Content through any medium, whether alone or in combination with other content or materials, in any manner and by any means, method or technology, whether now known or hereafter created, in connection with Spotify for Artists and Spotify's music streaming service, the promotion and marketing of Spotify for Artists and Spotify's music streaming service and the promotion and marketing of Spotify for Artists and Spotify's music streaming service. If you do not want Spotify to use your User Content for these purposes, you should not post User Content to Spotify for Artists. To the extent you provide User Content that contains your name, likeness or photograph, you further grant us the non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide right to use such name, likeness, and photograph on Spotify for Artists and Spotify's music streaming service and in our marketing communications to advertise, market and promote the availability of your User Content on Spotify for Artists and Spotify's music streaming service. Where applicable and to the extent permitted under applicable law, you also agree to waive, and not to enforce, any "moral rights" or equivalent rights, such as your right to be identified as the author of any User Content, including Feedback (as defined below), and your right to object to derogatory treatment of such User Content.
Again, very scary sounding. But earlier in the agreement they share this clause: “For the avoidance of doubt, "User Content" includes all information, materials and other content that is added, created, uploaded, submitted, distributed, or posted to Spotify for Artists by users.”.
Remember that this is an agreement for usage of the online platform Spotify For Artists - do you upload your music to Spotify For Artists?
No.
This particular Spotify TOS applies to content you upload to Spotify for Artists such as Canvas, Clips, Bio Pics, biographies etc. Another common example, if Spotify makes a ‘This is XXXXX’ playlist, they need the permission to create the derivative work of your artist image on the playlist artwork, use your name on it and show it to people.
Again it does not apply to music.
What TOS applies to my music?
Artists have agreements with labels and/or distributors, and distributors have agreements with DSPs like Spotify. Your distributor can’t authorize a DSP to have rights of your music that they don’t have in the first place. Meaning, you should check your distributor agreement.
You give your distributor rights and then they are able to pass those rights onto Spotify.
But there is a problem here: the agreement between your distributor and Spotify or any other DSP isn’t typically public. Your distributor does show you an agreement you have with them and typically these do spell things out pretty clearly, but from what i’ve seen there is often a clause in there that allows them to to agree to terms with DSPs on your behalf as a means of covering themselves.
But as you might imagine distributors would not want the negative press of sneaking anything major in, because it would eventually leak.
Conclusion
Hopefully this makes it clear enough that Spotify isn’t trying to pull a fast one here. Basically a few creators misunderstood the language, made some viral videos and misinformed hundreds of thousands of artists.
I will however mention that i’m not a lawyer. But I did take a look at what a real music lawyer had to say about it, specifically Ryan Schmidt. I had Ryan on my channel a few months ago as well (watch here), and fun fact we used to play open mics together like 18 years ago or something.
In a nutshell he had the same conclusion I did. But if you have an entertainment lawyer feel free to run this by them and find out for yourself if you’re concerned.
Spotify has had a bad string of negative press recently so I don’t blame artists for being a bit trigger-happy with them. But I think it’s important to slow down every time something like this happens and verify the factuality of the claim before making rash decisions.
Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:
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New Content
In this video I talk about why waterfall releases are still a great tactic and why the changing Spotify popularity index doesn't really matter.
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