Spotify has been around for more than 15 years. We now have more than 650 million listeners who are streaming more songs per month than ever before, which means the activity on the platform increases exponentially.
Streaming services pay based on streamshare, not a per-stream rate. So as the total number of streams on the platform increases, so does the number of streams required to generate a certain amount in royalties. (Though the royalty pool grows, too: In 2024, if an artist received 1 in every 1 million streams on Spotify, they generated around $10,000 on average, compared to only $1,000 10 years ago.)
Because of the growth of streaming and the increase in engagement per user, the meaning of “a million streams” has changed over the years — lots of tracks are reaching a million streams, and more often than you’d think. In fact, 1,340,000 songs have now surpassed a million streams, and 357,000 songs received a million streams in 2024 alone. That’s up from 281,000 songs in 2022. 850 songs reached a billion streams by the end of 2024. To get a better sense of the Spotify ecosystem, you can play around with the interactive tool on this site, which reflects data as of December 2024.