After reading the whole article, I still don’t know what Uruguay wants to happen.

Found an earlier article by El Observador before the legislation passed. Under Uruguay’s old laws Spotify, YouTube, an other streaming platforms paid little to nothing in artist royalties. With the new legislation artists will now see fair compensation.

The Guardian does a better job explaining Spotify’s problem: do the royalties come from rights holders (I am assuming they’re referring to record labels) or the streaming services? The later case they believe will cause them to pay double what they’re paying for streaming rights.

The issue just needs to back to Uruguay’s government to sort out who pays the artist royalties, or if both labels and streaming share a proportionate responsibility.

Thanks.

Putting the El Observador article through translate

When a song in Uruguay is played on radio, television or at a party, the rights are collected by the General Association of Authors of Uruguay (Agadu) which retains the 60% of what is paid. The remaining 40% is divided equally between performers and record labels.

Spotify says that it already pays for the rights. This understanding would mean that the players in Uruguay should work out how that is to be split.

Spotify fears that the new law turns what they pay currently, simply into one share of the total, implying an extreme increase of the cost.