The Holiday season is here, and it brought out snow and sparkle with it!! But it means that it is also the time for sharing your Spotify Wrapped list on social media. Let the world know which song and artist mesmerized you throughout the year and had the biggest impact!! However,  "Weird Al" Yankovic in the meantime has something for us. While the entire world was busy sharing their Spotify-wrapped list on social media handles, he took some time to make a wrapped video! On Wednesday, Yankovic posted, on November 29th, he posted a Wrapped video where he roasted Spotify, especially its system of Artist Payout. 

While supplying the users with their wrapped statistics, many artists shared their personalized videos that conveyed their gratitude to their fans. Among them were Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift, and well, "Weird Al" Yankovic. In his message, his choice of words was different, so much so that fans could not help but notice the unbiased roasting that he did of the biggest music streaming platform online. Since then, amused fans also have been sharing the clips on X, formerly Twitter and sharing their views on it. "It's my understanding that I had over 80 million streams on Spotify this year," he said in the video message. "So, if I'm doing the math right that means I earned $12. Enough to get myself a nice sandwich at a restaurant," he added. "So from the bottom of my heart, thanks for your support, and thanks for the sandwich," Yankovic said in the video thanking his fans differently. Since the clip has been shared on X, it has gained over a million views on the platform. 

Although he mentioned his gratefulness and thankfulness to his fans before taking a swipe at Spotify, his shade was not unnoticed. This came following the recent announcement that the music streaming platform made regarding the new updates and changes they are bringing to their Artist Payout System. Spotify has always had long complaints about its modest payouts to streaming artists. But this recent fiasco started when the platform announced that they are bringing some changes in their royalty system. In a newly shared press release, Spotify said that this update of its royalties payment system is intended to address streaming fraud. It also mentioned that the new royalty model could very well be worth a massive $1 billion, which will be additional, for both the up-and-coming and established artists and their music over the next 5 years. This means this newly updated system will fight the issue of artificial streaming but will also penalize smaller and emerging artists with fewer streams. 

"Starting in early 2024, tracks must have reached at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months in order to generate recorded royalties," Spotify confirmed in a recently shared press release on social media. "There is no change to the size of the music royalty pool being paid out to rights holders from Spotify; we will simply use the tens of millions of dollars annually to increase the payments to all eligible tracks, rather than spreading it out into $0.03 payments," it continued. 

The press release seemed to describe a new model of Artist Payout that is gaining a lot of controversy both from artists and listeners. This new model of payment is expected to affect more than two-thirds of the music streaming platform's song catalogue. The effect will take place because of how big the magnitude of uploading music to the platform where the vast majority of the tracks being uploaded do not get that many clicks or streams. 

According to the press release, Spotify mentioned that it will not pay royalties to tracks that do not have at least 1,000 streams on the platform. If this rule is to be followed, tens of millions of songs will fall below that 1k stream threshold and will no longer be qualified for royalties. These royalties will be distributed to a greater royalty pool instead and increase the payment of all eligible tracks. According to sources, at this time this new policy will only shift around 0.5% of Spotify's royalty pool to more streamed and popular tracks on the platform. In 2022, it was equalled to around $46 million in royalties, out of a massive total of $9.27 billion that was paid out. 

On 29th November, Wednesday Spotify announced its Wrapped data to the world which featured the most streamed songs, artists, albums, and podcasts of the whole year. Taylor Swift topped this year’s list of overall top artists, dethroning the three-years-running reigning champion, Bad Bunny. Swift also became the no. 1 at the year-end artist global chart for the first time in her career.