Spotify to slash royalties for rain sounds, white noise and other non-music tracks.

Spotify recently devised a new system dedicated to managing royalties for songs on its platform. As a result of this change, so-called "functional noises," such as the sound of rain or waves, white noise (lit. white noise), and any other non-musical audio file, will earn a negligible amount compared to traditional music tracks.

The changes that will be introduced mainly concern the length of the file, which will now have to reach at least two minutes. This development was born out of the great frustration present in the music art scene today: a 30-second track of "functional noise" used to earn as much as a full track of music produced by an artist.

Since tracks of this genre are often listened to on repeat, the owners had begun to make them shorter and shorter so as to get more listens and earn money accordingly.