We would love to report on the money that artists and songwriters take home as a result of their Spotify performance — but we do not have insight into each individual artist’s and songwriter’s agreements with their chosen rights holders. We can only report the data that’s available to us, which is the amount of money generated on Spotify.
So the data on this site centers around the royalties generated — for both recording and publishing — for music rights holders. We look at each performing artist on Spotify and are reporting how much was earned across their full catalog for each calendar year.
Spotify doesn’t pay artists or songwriters directly. We pay rights holders selected by the artist or songwriter — whether that’s a record label, publisher, independent distributor, performance rights organization, or collecting society. From here, we encourage you to check out the following videos: How the Money Flows, and How the Money Flows (Publishing Edition).