We start the week with a story that has been bubbling away in some corners of the creative internet. Earlier this month Spotify changed its terms and conditions. Rights holders became worried about some aspects of those changes that appeared to allow Spotify to share any content uploaded to the platform without the creator’s consent.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
The concerned voices had clearly become loud enough that Spotify felt the need, at the end of last week, to issue a statement clarifying that their conditions for creators had not changed. The announcement starts bluntly:
“You might be seeing some misinformation online about a change to Spotify’s Terms of Use and their impact on artists, authors, and creators. These claims are false.”
Spotify went on to explain:
“Spotify’s Terms of Use govern what listeners can and cannot do on our platform, not the creative works that artists, podcasters, creators, or authors distribute on our platform. These listener terms enable Spotify to display features such as user-created custom playlist covers, user comments on podcasts, and user-created playlist titles.
“The recent changes to our listener Terms of Use do not impact how artists’, podcasters’, creators’, and authors’ music, shows, and/or audiobooks are distributed on our platform, what rights they retain, or what Spotify does with their work.”
Storytel Adds New Features
And whilst we’re on audiobook topics beginning with the letter S, some news from Storytel. The company is introducing a range of new features to improve the experience for listeners.
Interestingly, one of these is a feature that syncs text and sound and has a clear nod to the European Accessibility Act. I say interestingly because I remember very well the chorus of indignation when Audible mooted its Captions feature. There was widespread talk of rights grabbing, yet in recent similar developments the only thing I’ve heard has been crickets, visually synced with tumbleweed.
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