A rock band from St Albans have announced plans to release a 1,000-track 30-second song album to protest Spotify’s royalty rates.

The streaming service’s model under fire means that a single stream of a song, and the revenue from it, is activated after just 30 seconds of airtime.

• READ MORE: Streaming: What Happens Next? Artists demand ‘a change in the way business is done’

As such, The Pocket Gods have decided to release a new album of songs that all hover around the 30-second mark, inspired by an article by the I by New York music teacher Mike Errico, who said Spotify’s methods surrounding what constitutes a stream could signal the end of the three-minute pop song.

“I saw the article and it made me think, ‘Why write longer songs when we get paid pretty little for just 30 seconds?’” said Pocket Gods frontman Mark Christopher Lee. I News.

The new album – ‘1000×30 – Nobody Makes Money Anymore’ – directly references Spotify’s business model, and as such Lee says it means the band “runs the risk of being kicked off the platform”. .

About the process of writing the album, he added, “We wrote and recorded 1,000 songs, each over 30 seconds long for the album. The longest is 36 seconds. It is designed to raise awareness of the campaign for fair royalty rates. »

Speaking of one song in particular called “0.002” – the amount of money they get per stream – Lee said, “We used to have 0.007 pa of play, still a pittance, but it seems have been discounted since Spotify bought the Joe Rogan Experience podcast for $100 million.

“Spotify is a great music resource and allows indie bands like us to download our music without record labels,” the frontman added. “I also believe in freedom of expression, although I’m a huge fan of Neil Young, so I don’t support the boycott. We just want to raise awareness about the issue of royalties.

In January, hundreds of scientists and medical professionals called on Spotify to address misinformation about COVID-19 on its platform, triggered by comments made on The Joe Rogan Experience. The more than 270 members of the scientific and medical community signed an open letter, which called Rogan’s actions “not only reprehensible and offensive, but also medically and culturally dangerous.”

Following the publication of this letter, Neil Young demanded that his music be “immediately” removed from the platform, with many high-profile artists like Joni Mitchell, David Crosby and Graham Nash following suit.

Since then, a Forrester Research consumer survey found that 19% of streaming service customers have since canceled their subscriptions or plan to do so in the near future. Although 54% of respondents said they had no intention of canceling their plans, a further 18.5% said they would consider canceling if more music was removed from the platform.

On Thursday (February 3), Spotify boss Daniel Ek said it was “too early to tell” what impact the row over Rogan’s podcast would have on the company’s future. Since the controversy began, Spotify shares have fallen more than 10% and on January 30 it was reported that the platform had lost more than $2bn (£1.5bn) in value Merchant.

“Usually when we’ve had controversies in the past, those are measured in months, not days,” Ek told Spotify investors. “We don’t change our policies based on a creator, or based on a media cycle or calls from someone else.”

Last October, several major streaming services offered “lowest royalty rates in history” ahead of a review of royalty rates in the United States.