In January Spotify revealed it paid $10 billion in royalties to artists in 2024 alone, and today, the company shed more light on the data.
The yearly payouts to the music industry have increased tenfold since 2014, with over 12,500 artists generating over $100,000 in royalties last year.
Spotify said that a lot has changed in the past decade. The global recorded music revenues from streaming in 2014 were $13 billion, $1B of which was contributed by the Swedish company. Since then, revenue has more than doubled to $28 billion in 2023, with over 500 million paying listeners across all music platforms.
With that in mind, there are over 200 artists who have passed the threshold of $5 million. Back in 2017, there was only one. The $1 million barrier was passed by 1,500 artists.
Spotify has paid $4.5 billion to publishing rights holders over the past two years. This includes songwriters, publishers, PROs (performing rights organizations, a.k.a. artists’ unions), and other collecting societies.
Out of the 1,500 artists that saw the seven-digit sum in USD, 80% of them did not have a song reach the Spotify Global Daily Top 50 chart – one of the most popular playlists on the platform. They are not just legacy artists; it includes actively touring musicians with actual ticketed events in 2024.
Spotify pointed out another interesting trend: the broader interest in multilingual music. Back in 2017, only songs in English and Spanish surpassed $100 million in royalties. In 2024, there were eight languages – English, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, French, Portuguese, and German.
The threshold of $1 million in royalties was surpassed by music in 17 languages, while the $100,000 mark was reached by artists in 50 languages.
Spotify confirmed how much one stream (playing one song) costs. 1 million streams equal $10,000, which is USD 0.01, or 1 American cent. However, this isn’t a flat rate, and the payout is based on streamshare because, as the company explained, a fixed per-stream rate is not viable because listeners don’t pay per song they listen to.
Nearly a quarter of global recorded music revenue comes from Spotify today, up from 15% in 2017. The total number includes physical sales, touring, merch, sync, and other sources, highlighting the key position of Spotify in the industry.
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