DMN October Report Confirmed—Apple Will Pay Higher Royalties on Spatial Audio Tracks

Digital Music News reported on the opportunity of Apple paying increased royalties for spatial audio content material after reviewing a leaked electronic mail in October 2023. Now we all know what these increased royalty charges truly are.

Bloomberg confirmed the DMN report in December 2023, describing the upper royalty charges as an incentive to get artists on board with making their work out there within the format. The preliminary electronic mail that Digital Music News reviewed acknowledged “to acknowledge the inventive funding and worth that high-quality spatial audio brings to each followers and artists, we will likely be making adjustments to how royalties are calculated. Plays of content material out there in spatial audio will obtain a better royalty worth.”

At the time, the e-mail didn’t clarify what the upper royalty worth could be. New reporting from Billboard appears to verify that the upper charge will likely be as much as 10% greater than content material not out there in Dolby Atmos.

“Pro-rata shares for ‘Spatial Available’ performs will likely be calculated utilizing an element of 1.1 whereas ‘Non-Spatial Available’ performs will proceed to make use of an element of 1,” the e-mail reviewed by Billboard reads. “This change just isn’t solely meant to reward increased high quality content material, but additionally to make sure that artists are being compensated for the time and funding they put into mixing spatial.”

This letter additionally offers us a peek at a few of the stats Apple Music is touting in terms of the spatial audio format. According to the letter, greater than 90% of Apple Music listeners have listened to spatial audio and performs for the format have tripled within the final two years. Apple Music additionally states that the variety of tracks out there within the format have elevated 5,000% since launch—and that quantity has doubled in 2023 alone.

Apple first made its spatial audio content material debut on May 17, 2021—throwing a wrench into Spotify’s plans of upselling spatial audio underneath a Spotify HiFi banner the identical yr. That plan from Spotify has nonetheless but to materialize, greater than two years on. Meanwhile, Apple Music’s increased royalty charges for spatial audio will encourage much more adoption—maybe amongst older recordings, too.