Spotify’s sparse spending of $100 million fairness fund attracts issue

The inside track: Spotify’s $100 million Writer Fairness Fund designed to reinforce tune and content material initiatives from underrepresented communities has spent lower than 10% on such projects in its first 12 months, consistent with Bloomberg reporting.

• The fund was once based ultimate 12 months according to a wave of grievance in opposition to the platform’s best podcaster Joe Rogan after movies of him announcing racial slurs went viral on-line. Rogan had additionally been broadly criticized for spreading COVID-19 vaccine disinformation.

Beginning gradual: The Writer Fairness Fund was once introduced with the intent of making and licensing content material from underrepresented or minority teams. There were a handful of main investments, however a lot of the cash is sitting unused.

• Bloomberg’s record additionally mentioned union employees at Spotify’s Parcast community famous sparse spending for a special fund with equivalent intentions. Employees wrote control previous this 12 months announcing the corporate “had licensed simply $5,000 in spending” during the last 12 months of $100,000 earmarked for once a year variety, fairness, inclusion, and accessibility paintings, the hole reported.
• It’s no longer like Spotify hasn’t been that specialize in creators. A lot of its main product launches and acquisitions within the ultimate 12 months have sought to scale back boundaries to making and placing content material up on Spotify, which as just lately as this month introduced new gear for creators.
• Whilst the Writer Fairness fund isn’t precisely like previous author fee finances on platforms corresponding to TikTok or YouTube, it’s every other instance of the opaque payout and funding insurance policies that experience pressured such finances to be in large part deserted in want of revenue-sharing fashions.
• Spotify isn’t on my own in showing to slack off on variety projects. Range, fairness, and inclusion efforts and jobs took harsh cuts as firms slashed prices within the softening financial system.

Our take: Spotify would possibly need to scale back on spending with rates of interest on the upward thrust, however the $100 million it’s it appears already put aside for varied content material must be put to make use of. Extra than simply getting used, Spotify must lend long-term reinforce to initiatives during which it invests; saturation of the podcast marketplace has made it more difficult for brand new presentations to search out an target audience.