Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for inviting Spotify to contribute to this committee's study. My name is Darren Schmidt. I am senior counsel at Spotify responsible for content licensing in Canada, and globally. I have been working on music industry issues for 17 years. Before

Canadian Heritage committee  First, I promise you we will not be shutting off your Spotify service. Thank you for being a subscriber. I think that question is somewhat difficult to answer. As I described in my opening statement, generally speaking we don't have relationships directly with these creators. We

Canadian Heritage committee  We certainly have that data, yes. I don't have it with me today. We'd be happy to get that for you. We have giant teams of people here who do nothing but data.

Canadian Heritage committee  I can't share that today because I don't have that available to me, but we can look into that and figure that out, although I guess the question goes back to an earlier issue, which is that we don't necessarily have visibility on what ultimately goes to artists and creators. Of

Canadian Heritage committee  I can look into that. The reason I hesitate, sir, is that we don't share per territory user numbers, just for competitive reasons. I'm somewhat limited to what we publicly disclose in our financial filings, but I can look into whether we can disclose that information to you and t

Canadian Heritage committee  We have a number of employees in Canada right now. I think it's 30-something. There is an editorial team that develops dedicated playlists, and we've had live shows in Canada. I mentioned in my testimony that we're working with an upcoming event to promote francophone hip-hop art

Canadian Heritage committee  That's true. As a digital service provider, we're hearing from Casablanca Media Publishing, and I may have the name wrong, but they develop artists. They have those relationships. They spend money on A & R, or artists and repertoire. That's what they do. It's important for th

Canadian Heritage committee  That's a pretty broad question. The answer has to be yes because, as in Canada, there are tariff rates. We don't pay under the tariff rates because we have licences negotiated with some of the bodies in Canada. In the United States, for example, there is section 115 of the Copyri

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, he is. I'm trying to be Mr. Spotify, though.

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, I can't speak to the example that you've given about the difference between the radio play payout and the Spotify payout. I can speak to the Spotify payout, though. I think there is a reality of streaming revenue share economics, as opposed to unit-based economics

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. Sorry; I wasn't sure if you could still see me, but yes.

Industry committee  Thank you for inviting Spotify to contribute to this committee's statutory review. My name is Darren Schmidt. I'm senior counsel at Spotify, responsible for content licensing in Canada and globally. I'm delighted to talk to you about Spotify, and particularly about the benefits

Industry committee  There is no standard royalty. As I described in my opening statement, we have licence agreements with rights holders, which means rights holders on the sound recording side of the spectrum and the music publishing side of the spectrum.

Industry committee  Without talking about Drake in particular, I think it's fair to say that if lots more people are listening to some piece of music versus another, the first one would make more money. That's correct.

Industry committee  I think there's a misunderstanding here in the idea that we have a per-stream royalty at all. For the most part, that's not true. We have hundreds of licence agreements. I have to generalize somewhat because they're all somewhat different, but there are certain commonalities in