Image courtesy of Spotify
The streaming giant Spotify has reached a settlement with the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) over the unpaid royalties it accrued from failing to identify (and therefore pay) certain music publishers.According to Billboard, the stipulations of the agreement call for Spotify to set aside a pool of $30 million. From this sum, $25 million will be used to pay publishers for use of their material that it hadn't properly identified, spanning from Spotify's application launch on Oct 7, 2008 to June 30, 2017. Starting on April 16, 2016, music publishers will have a three-month window to declare and prove ownership from the unclaimed pool of songs. The extra $5 million, and any additional money not claimed from the pool will act as a bonus to be distributed among publishers based on their market shares of Spotify."As we have said many times, we have always been committed to paying songwriters and publishers every penny," Spotify's head of communications Jonathan Prince said in a statement to Billboard. "We appreciate the hard work of everyone at the NMPA to secure this agreement and we look forward to further collaboration with them as we build a comprehensive publishing administration system."In a separate statement, the CEO of NMPA David Israelite said: "I am thrilled that through this agreement both independent and major publishers and songwriters will be able to get what is owed to them. We must continue to push digital services to properly pay for the musical works that fuel their businesses and after much work together, we have found a way for Spotify to quickly get royalties to the right people."The settlement should temper the relationship between Spotify and the artistic community after the streaming giant was slapped with a series of lawsuits over unpaid royalties.