Here’s the thing: Streaming doesn’t work like buying songs. Fans pay for unlimited access, not per track they listen to. So a “per stream” rate isn’t actually how anyone gets paid – not on Spotify, or on any major streaming service. Instead, you get paid based on your share of total streams — which is called “streamshare.”
Our focus is simple: maximize the total money flowing to artists and songwriters. The data on this site shows that progress. In 2025 we paid out $11B+, more than any other streaming service, and more than any year in our history. That figure has increased by more than 10x since 2014 and represents a big part of the nearly $70B Spotify has paid since its founding.
Our incentives are aligned with artists: Like all major streaming services, we pay out roughly two-thirds of every dollar generated from music back to artists’ and songwriters’ rights holders. So that means that when we grow, artist payouts grow, too.
Our model drives more fan engagement and generates revenue from more places, which means larger total checks from Spotify to rightsholders. That’s why we pay more than any other service, and probably why many other services keep their total payouts to the industry a secret. We are maximizing overall revenue and generating the most possible money for rightsholders and their artists and songwriters.
We know that “per-stream rate” can seem like an intuitive calculation to make, and you may want help making sense of the per-stream comparisons across streaming services that you see discussed publicly. We break down why those numbers look the way they do in the question below: “Why does the per-stream rate appear lower for Spotify than some other streaming services?“