Spotify's royalty model will get a massive revamp next year to give "working artists" a bigger cut, according to Music Business Worldwide. Starting in the first quarter of 2024, Spotify will reportedly implement three changes meant to "combat three drains on the royalty pool." The first one is establishing a minimum number of annual streams a track must reach before it starts generating royalties, which is supposed to demonetize tracks that earn less than 5 cents a month. Apparently, while these tracks make up a tiny percentage of music on the platform -- 99.5 percent of all monetized content will still be earning money after this change -- their royalties still cost Spotify tens of millions of dollars a year. Based on Music Business Worldwide's computations, a track has to generate 200 plays a year to be able to earn 5 cents.

Spotify, the most popular music streaming service, might be getting ready to jump into the hardware game -- if a few job postings are to be believed. The company recently posted a handful of openings that make clear references to designing and selling hardware direct to Spotify users. A posting for a senior hardware product manager says that the eventual hire would work on an initiative to "deliver hardware directly from Spotify to existing and new customers." It also indicates that the hardware would be "a category defining product akin to Pebble Watch, Amazon Echo, and Snap Spectacles." Spotify indicates that this would be a "fully-connected" hardware device; the senior product manager would define both the internet-connected hardware requirements as well as its software.