Spotify released its annual Loud & Clear report on Tuesday, detailing information on Music Streaming Service royalty payments. Spotify revealed earlier this year that it paid $10 billion to the music industry in 2024, but the new report provides detailed figures on payments to dispel reports that the company will not properly reward artists for their work.
Artists who received one for every million Spotify streams are 10 times the same stream share would have been generated 10 years ago by the artists who generated an average of over $10,000 in 2024.
Spotify advertises the amounts they pay to artists and songwriters, but many demand fair compensation from streaming services. A few weeks later, with changes introduced by Spotify last year, Billboard estimates that writers will lose around $150 million in 12 months.
Additionally, a new report from Duetti (which Spotify rejected in a TechCrunch earlier statement) found that Apple Music is still paying twice as much artist as Spotify. We found out that Spotify paid $3.0 per 1,000 streams, while other platforms like Amazon Music, Apple Music and YouTube have paid $8.8, $6.2 and $4.8 per 1,000 streams in 2024, respectively.
Following the release of the report, Spotify told TechCrunch that “these claims are ridiculous and unfounded” and that “streaming services don't pay per stream.”
A new report on Spotify attempts to dismiss these reports and concerns. This report details the company's payout model and explains how artists and publishers can earn revenue on the platform.
“All major streaming services calculate payouts the same way. Based on stream share (if the artist's catalogue accounts for 1% of the total stream, it earns 1% of the total loyalty),” the company explained in its report. “Even so, misconceptions about 'rates per stream' are spreading. Streaming services do not pay based on a fixed rate per stream, so that listeners don't pay for each song they're listening to. ”
The coalition of musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) has been asking for Spotify to quite compensate for artists who struggle to make a living, especially those who are independent and small. Rep. Rashida Traeve and Rep. Jamal Bowman last year worked together to introduce the Musicians Act to detail the proposal aimed at increasing the streaming royalty of musicians to one cent per cent.
“It's easy to calculate what Spotify pays directly to recording artists: $0,” a UMAW spokesman said in a statement from TechCrunch.
“There is no direct payment to recording artists through Spotify, because its way of streaming is different from other digital platforms such as satellite radio, internet broadcasting, or “non-interactive” streaming, and all pays the recording artists directly because they claim that they do not fall under the requirements for direct payments to musicians. This obviously needs to be changed. UMAW closes this loophole and supports the Musicians Act's living wage to pay streaming to musicians who create content for Spotify and other platforms,” the statement concluded.
The Spotify report touts payments as improving despite concerns from the industry.
The report reveals that the number of royalty-generating artists has tripled since 2017. Ten years ago, top Spotify artists won just $5 million, and today more than 200 artists outpace their milestones.
Over the past decade, Spotify's top 10,000 artists have almost four times their royalties (from $34,000 to $131,000), and 10 times more royalties generated by 100,000 rank artists, up nearly $6,000 in 2024 from under $600 in 2014.
Additionally, the company revealed that nearly 1,500 artists generated royalties of over $1 million last year on Spotify alone. Spotify points out that 80% of these artists didn't have Reach The Song The Song on the Spotify Global Daily Top 50 chart in 2024.
Spotify also shared that while the artists who generated at least $100,000 in royalties recorded music in over 50 languages in 2024, the artists who generated at least $1 million on Spotify recorded music in 17 different languages.