You may have heard the rumor that Spotify is in the middle of renegotiations with the major label groups–that typically would include publishers.  If Spotify owed you a pile of money and wanted to extend your contract, wouldn’t you expect them to clean up any money they already owed you first?

The Wall Street Journal reports that the “black box” at streaming services is even worse that we thought:

In the 10 months that ended this past January, Spotify users in the U.S. listened more than 708,000 times to “Out of Time” by the pop-punk band A Day to Remember, but the music-streaming service paid no songwriter royalties, according to data shared with the band’s record label and music publisher.

The omission wasn’t an isolated event.

Of the millions of times Spotify users listened to songs distributed by Victory Records and published by sister company Another Victory Music Publishing during…