Before 2018, there was an ongoing battle regarding credits to be given to songwriters, producers and creators.
Then in 2018, the copyright royalty board (CRB) made an announcement that songwriters will get 44% pay increase. Digital streaming including Spotify, Google, Pandora and Amazon had filed an appeal to reconsider the decision against the increase.
Also, it is not fully true that Spotify is not giving credits. Almost a year ago in Feb 2020, Spotify has introduced click able songwriter credits under beta program called “songwriter pages”.
They backed this in 2018, but it is clickable in 2020. Any songwriter who is included in beta, all the songs written by the songwriter are made available whenever listener will click the song writer name on song credits.
Songwriter profile is accessible. However, it is justifiable to say in reply to this question that the songwriter credit is still a mess with lots of flaws and gaps still needed to be filled for giving the right credit to the person.
It is because when we click the details for songwriter in credits, the songwriter picture will not be highlighted instead his work for the artist will be publicized.
There are still certain limitations rewarding the songwriters with their true potential. Yet, Youtube and Pandora have taken initiative to give credits to them in 2018 & 2019.
The reason behind this disarray is that the metadata of this music credit is not being streamlined as yet, however, it can be predicted that it will be resolve in near future to establish the ease of business among all stakeholders in years to come.
The appeal claimed by Spotify along with others is still under trial till date. Meanwhile, according to Billboard report, Spotify also announced that they have overpaid the songwriters and publishers in 2018 and claimed the money in return based on the CRB copyright regulations.
They further announced in 2018, that they are facilitating the publishers and songwriters for returning overpayment. They did not ask for immediate return but stretched the time till 2019 to lessen the impact of payment adjustment.
