The Payouts
Who is generating money? How much are they making? And how has that changed each of the past seven 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…
Revenue Generation Over the Years
As of early 2024, Spotify’s all-time payouts to the music industry are $48+ 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 catalog — for each of the past seven years on Spotify.
These figures only represent a 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, or 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 2023.
*$48 billion includes both recording and publishing royalties.
**Spotify’s % of recorded music revenue calculated based on IFPI’s 2024 Global Music Report.
Your Questions, Answered
We know you have a ton of questions around music streaming economics and we want to make sure to get you the answers. We’ve included the questions we get most frequently from artists and will continue to add to this list as more questions come in.