Immediately, Spotify introduced that it had paid out more than $11 billion to the music trade in 2025. It’s an impressive-sounding quantity that’s a full $1 billion greater than it paid last year. And, in response to Spotify, that accounts for roughly 30 p.c of your entire recording trade’s income. This determine, nonetheless, is solely a measure of royalties paid to the music trade and doesn’t embrace merch or ticket gross sales, nor does it embrace audiobook royalties or podcasting offers.
Nonetheless, it is very important word that this doesn’t imply that Spotify paid out $11 billion to musicians and artists. That cash went to “rightsholders.” That features labels, distributors, publishers, and extra.
Spotify says that it doesn’t have perception into how a lot of that cash finally finds its manner into artists’ fingers. Agreements for particular person artists can fluctuate tremendously. Nonetheless, it’s not unusual for an act on a significant label to see as little as 15 percent of their royalties. Although indie labels sometimes provide way more favorable deals, with 50 percent or extra going to the artist.
Spotify says that when once more, roughly half of these royalties had been paid to unbiased artists and labels. That features DIY acts that self-release music by means of distribution providers like DistroKid or TuneCore, in addition to these signed to indie labels. However it additionally probably contains library content material and a few so-called “ghost artists,” which have been the topic of controversy. Spotify’s International Head of Music Communications, Chris Macowski, says the corporate doesn’t have extra detailed information on how payouts to unbiased acts break down.
Macowski did say that over 12,500 artists generated greater than $100,000 in royalties in 2024. That’s up from 11,600 in 2023, whereas information for 2025 can be launched as a part of its annual report in March. Spotify claims that’s greater than the variety of artists being stocked on cabinets in report shops “on the peak of the CD period,” citing this 1994 article saying even an enormous report retailer on the time solely carried about 10,000 data and CDs.
As a result of royalties are calculated by dividing up a finite pool of cash, the extra songs which might be streamed, the decrease the per-stream funds are to artists. Except Spotify decides to take a smaller minimize of proceeds (it at the moment retains 30 p.c), the one method to develop that pool is to both develop its subscriber base or raise prices. Artists with fewer than 1,000 streams nonetheless obtain no payout from Spotify.
In its put up asserting the $11 billion in royalty funds, Spotify additionally teased future plans that appear geared toward addressing criticism it’s obtained. It guarantees “new options” to handle scams, artist impersonation, and spam content, whereas acknowledging that “AI is being exploited by unhealthy actors to flood streaming providers with low-quality slop,” in an try to steal income from actual artists, so it’ll introduce adjustments to artist verification.
The corporate additionally appears to be leaning extra totally into human curation in response to rising backlash against the algorithm. It mentioned it’ll “carry extra of the human voice behind that curation into the listening expertise.”
None of that, nonetheless, is more likely to quell the continued complaints from artists that Spotify pays less than its competitors.
Correction, February twenty eighth: An earlier model of this text cited incorrect years for what number of artists generated greater than $100,000 in royalties. The numbers have been up to date, and evaluate 2024 to 2023, not 2025 to 2024. We’ve additionally added Spotify’s supply for the report retailer statistic.