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The big picture: Spotify has set a record for the highest annual payment to the music industry from a single retailer for the second time in as many years. In 2014 when the industry hit a low of just $13 billion in global revenue, Spotify had around 15 million subscribers and contributed roughly $1 billion to the pot. A decade later in 2024, the Swedish streaming specialist paid out a record $10 billion to the music industry.
That’s up from the $9 billion in royalty checks written in 2023, and brings the company’s lifetime total to nearly $60 billion – impressive considering Spotify was founded just a few years removed from the end of the Napster era.
To further put it into perspective, Spotify estimates that around 10,000 artists generated at least $10,000 per year on its platform in 2014. Now, over 10,000 artists are making at least $100,000 annually on Spotify.
The streaming giant also makes it easier than ever for artists to get their music to listeners. According to economist Will Page, more music is released now in a single day than there was in the entirety of 1989. Back then, if you didn’t have a record deal, you simply weren’t one of the few thousand artists featured on store shelves or played on the radio.
Spotify has done a lot to normalize the behavior of paying for music streaming. Of note is the fact that more than 60 percent of the company’s premium subscribers were once free tier users. In addition to generating revenue from ads, the free tier has proven to be a viable model to attract and convert customers that didn’t expect to pay for music.
The sky is the limit for the music industry with regard to streaming. Collectively, there are more than 500 million paying listeners across all streaming services worldwide. Spotify said a world with a billion paying listeners is realistic, and is a goal that all parties should strive for.
Image credit: Filip Viadana Florence
