Spotify Paid Over $4.5 Billion to Music Publishers Over the Last Two Years, So Why Are Songwriters Struggling?

variety.com:

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Spotify announced earlier this year that it paid out a record $10 billion-plus to the music industry in 2024, bringing its total to nearly $60 billion since its inception in 2006.

The company — the world’s largest paid music-subscription service by a wide margin — maintains that it pays out 70% of every dollar it generates to the music industry, a generous percentage for any business.

In further details released today in Spotify’s annual “Loud & Clear” music economics report, the company notes that in 2024, nearly 1,500 artists generated over $1 million in royalties from Spotify alone (part of an estimated $4 million-plus across all of those artists’ recorded-music revenue sources) and that in 2024, independent artists and labels collectively generated more than $5 billion from the service.

It stresses that in the decade from 2014 to 2024, Spotify’s yearly payouts to the music industry increased tenfold, from $1 billion to over $10 billion, and especially that “There are more artists making more money on Spotify than ever before. “In fact,” the report continues, “the number of artists generating royalties at every threshold on this site — from $1,000 to $10 million per year — has at least tripled since 2017.