My partner is a musician, and once when I asked her what the small pocket on jeans was for she replied, “It’s for my Spotify royalties.” She may need to get a (slightly) bigger pocket.

The lowdown

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Spotify shakes up royalty policy

Spotify is updating its approach to royalties. From next year, tracks will need to have 1,000 plays in the last 12 months before they can be monetized.

The streaming service is also slashing payouts on non-music tracks like white noise, static, and rain sounds and imposing a minimum track length of two minutes. Until now, non-music creators have been able to game the system by making tracks 30 seconds, Spotify’s minimum allowed length, and looping them.

Music industry bosses have been critical of non-music sounds. On an earnings call, Warner Music Group’s CEO said, “It can’t be that an Ed Sheeran stream is worth exactly the same as a stream of rain falling on the roof.” Creators of such podcasts could reportedly make as much as $18,000 a month in ads, according to Bloomberg.

Spotify says the moves will allow it to divert an extra $1 billion in revenue towards emerging and professional artists over the next five years.

The content we're consuming today

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• The Guardian: King Charles is secretly profiting from the assets of dead UK citizens

Off-balance sheet items

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The bottom line