Artists deserve clarity about the economics of music streaming. This site aims to increase transparency by sharing new data on Spotify’s royalty payments and breaking down the global streaming economy, the players, and the process.
Explore the site for our top 10 takeaways from recent data.
Last updated March 2025; based on 2024 full-year data.
For another year, Spotify was the highest-paying retailer globally — paying the music industry over $10 billion in 2024. This brings total lifetime payouts to nearly $60 billion.
Spotify paid out more than any other retailer or streaming service in 2024, but that’s not all.
Our $10 billion payout is the largest in music industry history — more than any single retailer has ever paid in a year, and over 10x the contribution of the largest record store at the height of the CD era.
Spotify payouts have increased by 10x over the past 10 years
Fueling a more than 2x increase in music industry revenue over the same period
In the decade from 2014 to 2024, Spotify’s yearly payouts to the music industry increased 10x from $1 billion to over $10 billion.
In 2014, the music industry hit a low point when global recorded music revenues were only $13 billion. Spotify’s annual contribution was around $1 billion at the time, with around 15 million paying subscribers.
Spotify has been on a mission to get the world to value music again — and the system we’ve built together is working. Since the low point, global recorded revenue has more than doubled to over $28 billion in 2023 (IFPI). Today, there are well over 500 million paying listeners across all music streaming services.
The number of artists generating royalties at every threshold has at least tripled since 2017
But the number of people with at least one track on Spotify has increased even more
Then NowThere are more artists making more money on Spotify than ever before. In fact, the number of artists generating royalties at every threshold on this site — from $1,000 to $10 million per year* — has at least tripled since 2017. Ten years ago, the top artist on Spotify generated just over $5 million. Today, there are over 200 artists who have passed that threshold.
Know what’s grown even faster? The number of uploaders to Spotify, which is now nearly 12 million. Looking back to the peak of the CD era, only a few thousand artists had their music on the shelves of record stores.
The paradox? Streaming has allowed millions to easily share their music globally — that’s an amazing thing. But the sheer volume of uploaders means the fraction who find success appears smaller over time. The fact remains: Thanks to streaming, more artists than ever before are generating royalties at every career stage. More than at any time in music history. And we think that’s what really matters.
*These figures represent revenue generated from Spotify alone. Taking into account earnings from other recorded revenue streams, these artists likely generated more than 4x this amount.
The 100,000th-ranked artist generated almost $6K in Spotify royalties
Over the past decade, the 100,000th-ranked* artist on Spotify has seen their generated royalties multiply by over 10x – increasing from well under $600 in 2014 to almost $6,000 in 2024.
During that same time period, the 10,000th-ranked artist on Spotify has seen their royalties increase almost 4x – from $34K to $131K.
As a point of comparison, at the peak of the CD era, Tower Records carried only 50,000 CDs from thousands of artists in total (source). Today, however, over 100,000 artists are generating thousands in royalties on Spotify alone.
*Rankings are based on royalties generated, from highest to lowest.
Nearly $4.5B has been paid out to publishing rights holders over the last two years
Our 2024 publishing payouts saw double-digit percentage growth compared to 2023
Spotify paid out nearly $4.5 billion to publishing rights holders – who represent songwriters – over the last two years.
Our music-publishing payout hit a new peak in 2024, seeing double-digit-percentage growth compared to 2023.
Songwriters – through their publishers, PROs, and collecting societies – are generating record-breaking revenues driven by streaming services.
Nearly 1,500 artists generated over $1M in royalties on Spotify
In 2024, nearly 1,500 artists generated over $1M* in royalties from Spotify alone – and likely over $4M across all recorded revenue sources.
This isn’t just a story about household names: 80% of these artists didn’t have a song reach the Spotify Global Daily Top 50 chart in 2024.
It’s not just about legacy artists either, as the majority didn’t even launch their careers until 2010 or later. Over 80% of them are actively touring artists with at least one ticketed event in 2024.
Success in the streaming era doesn’t require a chart-topping hit or a decade-spanning catalog – it’s about building a loyal fanbase that keeps coming back.
*As a rule of thumb on Spotify, artists can start approaching $1 million per year with around 4-5 million monthly listeners or 20-25 million monthly streams.
Artists see even more royalties come from abroad vs.
their home countries
Most professional and emerging artists see more money come from abroad than from their home markets: Of the artists who generated $1K+ in royalties on Spotify in 2024, more than half saw most of their royalties come from listeners outside of their home countries.
In fact, almost one-third of them generated more than 75% of their royalties from listeners outside their home countries.
Meanwhile, over half of all artists generating $1K+ have collaborated with at least one artist from another country. And more than 80% of all artists generating $100K+ have collaborated with at least one artist from abroad.
As Spotify’s listener base continues to expand globally, artists are increasingly able to connect with fans far beyond their home markets — growing their reach and their earning potential on a global scale.
Music in eight different languages each earned over $100M in royalties
In 2017, only English and Spanish individually surpassed that threshold
Music from around the world is thriving like never before — artists everywhere are breaking barriers and reaching new heights.
In 2024, the artists who generated at least $1 million on Spotify recorded music in 17 different languages. That’s up more than double from 2017.
The artists who generated at least $100K in royalties have recorded music in over 50 languages — also more than double the number of languages at that threshold in 2017.
In 2024, independent artists and labels collectively* generated more than $5 billion from Spotify — representing about half of total Spotify royalties for another year.
Spotify globally represents about one-third of overall recorded streaming revenue (IFPI), but represents over 50% of Indies’ streaming revenue (MIDiA). That over-index of Spotify in Indies’ revenue shows that our model uniquely creates more opportunities for more artists to build sustainable careers in music.
*The catalogs of DIY artists and artists signed to independent record labels.
One in every million streams = $10K/year
In 2024, for the first time ever, an artist who received one in every million streams on Spotify generated over $10,000 on average. That’s 10x what the same streamshare would have generated a decade ago.
Major streaming services all calculate payouts the same way: based on streamshare (if an artist’s catalog accounts for 1% of total streams, it would earn 1% of total royalties). Still, misconceptions about “per-stream rates” remain widespread.
Streaming services don’t pay out based on a fixed per-stream rate — just like listeners don’t pay per song they listen to. Across services, each subscriber contributes roughly the same amount to the royalty pool. So, a higher “per-stream rate” just means that users are streaming less. Think about it: If a service had a “per-stream rate” of $1, that would mean each subscriber, on average, only streams about 10 times per month. Clearly, a service like that isn’t providing much value, making it unlikely that users would keep paying for it.
Artists earn more on Spotify for the same level of popularity. In 2024, 0.0001% of total streams generated over $10,000 on average. One in a million? That’s more valuable than ever before — and more valuable here than anywhere else.
Who is generating money? How much are they making? And how has that changed over the past eight years? Spotify remains the only streaming service that publishes this level of data about how much artists are generating each year. So, let’s get into it…
As of the end of 2024, Spotify’s all-time payouts to the music industry total nearly $60 billion.*
To put those numbers in context, click a dollar amount below to see how many artists globally generated at least that amount—across recording and publishing for their catalogs—for each of the past eight years on Spotify.
These figures only represent part of the picture. Spotify is one of many music-streaming services that generate revenue for the music industry, and streaming only makes up a portion of all industry revenues. There are also physical sales, touring, merch, sync, and other sources. Spotify accounts for nearly a quarter of global recorded music revenue (up from less than 15% in 2017).** As a rough estimate, you can multiply the Spotify revenue by four to approximate how much artists generated from all recorded revenue sources in 2024.
*$60 billion includes both recording and publishing royalties.
**Spotify’s % of recorded music revenue calculated based on IFPI’s 2024 Global Music Report.
One of the questions we get asked most often is: How do artists and songwriters get paid?
We break it down in the videos below:
Spotify, like the other major streaming services, pays royalties to rights holders based on an artist’s share of overall streams across the platform. This is referred to as “streamshare.” For example, in 2024, an artist who accounted for 1 in every 1 million streams on Spotify generated over $10,000 on average. So it’s important to know how streaming numbers stack up on Spotify in 2024 to understand payouts.
What might have been a lot of streams even five years ago looks pretty different today. In fact, over 357,000 songs were streamed over a million times in 2024 alone. It would take more than two years of nonstop listening to hear them all.
Enter any monthly listener count for an artist or all-time stream count for a song to estimate how each number compares with all artists and songs on Spotify.
based on 2024 data
based on 2024 data
