According to the streaming giant, Spotify distributed over $9 billion in royalties to more than 78,850 artists last year.
As the number of users has grown to over 600 million listeners, payouts have almost tripled in the last six years. This information was shared by the Swedish company in a post. Last year’s record pushed the total amount paid to artists past $48 billion.
Interestingly, independent musicians generated nearly $4.5 billion. The company mentioned that it is the first time Indies contributed to about half of the industry's total on Spotify, approximately half of the total for 2023. This figure reflects a fourfold increase since 2017.
In fact, the company stated that over 10 million “uploaders” have at least one track on Spotify. Out of those, about 8 million have fewer than 10 tracks available, and around 5 million have received less than 100 total streams across all of their uploads.
Spotify emphasized its focus on the approximately 225,000 emerging and professional artists who rely on streaming as a crucial part of their careers and livelihood.
The streaming giant also revealed that 1,250 of the artists who received payments got $1 million or more, nearly triple the 460 who received that much in 2017. To reach this threshold, artists need around 4 to 5 million monthly listeners or 20 to 25 million monthly streams.
Many of these artists are not widely known, according to the company, and they did not need a popular song to have a successful year. Over 1,000 in this group did not have a single track that made it to Spotify’s Global Top 50 throughout the year.
Additionally, another 11,600 artists received more than $100,000 in payouts, which is also about triple the number from 2017.
However, the majority of recipients, around 66,000, received less than $10,000 in royalty payments, and in some cases as little as $1,000. In 2017, this number was 23,400.
According to the company, almost half of the recipients who received $10,000 in royalties from Spotify in 2017 are now earning over $50,000 on the platform.
The data illustrates a significant increase in the number of artists whose music is available on the platform, as well as higher payments. Spotify stated in a post on its website that over half of the receiving artists are from countries where English is not the primary language, with Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, and Korean being the top languages after English. Additionally, there were substantial increases in Hindi, Indonesian, Punjabi, Tamil, and Greek in 2023.
In 2023, over 329,000 songs were streamed over 1 million times.
Furthermore, Spotify revealed that it paid out nearly $4 billion to publishing rights holders over the past two years.
