Kaalep explained that one of EAÜ's main metrics is how much money the society manages to pay out to authors over a calendar year.

"It seems to me that last year was quite good. Whereas previously it was €7.6 million, last year it was €9 million," he said. Among other things, he noted that the distribution of revenue from TV, VOD, and cinema has become more efficient.

Data accuracy may be lacking

For years, there has been much discussion about how, according to experts, Spotify does not pay artists fairly. Despite the country's listener base, there are only a few Estonian artists — such as Syn Cole and Tommy Cash — for whom Spotify is a solid source of income. For others, Spotify is more of a platform for visibility.

"When we look at consumption volumes on Spotify, YouTube, and YouTube Music, they do not correlate with the compensation received," Kaalep noted. "We are dealing with this issue, but it is a global problem. We are not the only organization facing this."

According to Kaalep, several aspects are concerning: first, the level of compensation, and second, data accuracy.

"It seems that Spotify is a large technology company, so you would expect them to have very precise data, but it turns out that may not always be the case. This means that the information they have on musical works may not align with what is in international authors' societies' databases. This may not be solely a Spotify issue — it could also be due to incorrect registrations somewhere within societies or databases. We need to reconcile these datasets. We still don't know how big the problem is on their end, but it definitely requires attention," he said.

Precise information on radio plays

The money collected over the year is also distributed among authors based on radio airplay. This means the society gathers playlists from all radio stations and tracks how often each piece of music is broadcast.

"If a track has been played, every Estonian author must be able to see that it has been played. They can track this through our self-service portal. We collect this information with a level of detail that includes the duration of the broadcast. A track may be three minutes and 30 seconds long, but if only one minute and 47 seconds was played, that also affects the amount of royalties received," Kaalep explained.

However, for accounting reasons, the society does not make payouts to artists whose music has generated less than €30 in revenue.

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