“Our model uniquely creates more opportunities for indie artists to build sustainable careers in music”: Spotify releases its annual royalties reportSpotify has released its Loud & Clear annual royalty report for 2024, in which it aims to provide “clarity about the economics of music streaming”.
As part of its key findings, Spotify shares that it was again the highest paying retailer globally in 2024, paying the music industry over $10 billion in total. It says this is the largest payout in music industry history, and is over 10x the contribution of the largest record store at the height of the CD era.

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The report lands among continued criticism of Spotify’s royalty model, with a vast number of artists feeling its payouts are too low. CEO Daniel Ek previously compared its royalty payouts to professional sports, saying: “Football is played by millions of people – but there’s a very small number that can live off playing full time”. At the end of Q4 last year, Spotify celebrated its first full year of profitability.
The data: This is how much money is being paid out
Despite the low royalty backlash, the new report states that from 2014 to 2024, Spotify’s yearly payouts to the music industry increased 10x from $1 billion to over $10 billion. “Spotify has been on a mission to get the world to value music again – and the system we’ve built together is working,” it claims.
In 2024, nearly 1,500 artists generated over $1M in royalties from Spotify alone. It argues that these artists aren’t just household names either, as 80 percent of them didn’t have a song reach the Spotify Global Daily Top 50 chart in 2024. The majority were also not legacy artists either, having not launched their careers until 2010 or later.
For the first time ever, an artist who received one in every million streams on Spotify generated over $10,000 on average last year. As for independent artists and labels, these collectively generated more than $5 billion from Spotify.
“Spotify globally represents about one-third of overall recorded streaming revenue (IFPI), but represents over 50 percent of Indies’ streaming revenue (MIDiA). That over-index of Spotify in Indies’ revenue shows that our model uniquely creates more opportunities for more artists to build sustainable careers in music,” it states.
Why Spotify feels “the fraction who find success appears smaller over time”
The Loud & Clear report also tries to tackle criticism of Spotify’s royalties by referring to what it calls the “paradox” of the modern music industry. The number of uploaders to Spotify is now nearly 12 million, and “looking back to the peak of the CD era, only a few thousand artists had their music on the shelves of record stores,” it explains.
“The paradox? Streaming has allowed millions to easily share their music globally – that’s an amazing thing. But the sheer volume of uploaders means the fraction who find success appears smaller over time. The fact remains: Thanks to streaming, more artists than ever before are generating royalties at every career stage. More than at any time in music history. And we think that’s what really matters.”
To further dive into its royalty model, Spotify has also released a new video (seemingly voiced by its AI DJ). In the breakdown, Spotify shares that it does not pay artists directly, but pays rights holders instead. In general, it pays them roughly two thirds of every dollar it makes from music. Watch below for more:

You can check out the full Loud & Clear report from Spotify now.
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