Spotify pays $11 billion to global discography

The economic contribution of Spotify to global discography is growing: in 2025, the market-leading streaming platform poured $11 billion into labels' coffers, up 10 per cent on the previous year's figure. Practically a third of the global record business comes from there. The first results of the diversification process undertaken by the company founded by Daniel Ek are also beginning to be seen: concert tickets worth 1.5 billion dollars were sold through Spotify last year.

This is what emerges from the new edition of Spotify Loud & Clear, the annual report that the Wall Street-listed Swedish company devotes to its relationship with the music business, as well as the royalties paid to its rights holders. It quickly emerges that over 13,800 artists, in 2025, generated at least $100,000 per year exclusively from Spotify, almost 1,400 more than the previous year. The world's top 80 artists each generate more than $10 million per year from Spotify alone (ten years ago there was only one).

On average, already within two years of debut, artists see more than half of their royalties come from listening outside their home country. 2025 was also marked by a certain 'multilingualism': tracks in 16 different languages reached Spotify's Global Top 50, more than twice as many as in 2020.

In 2025, the artist in the 100th place for earnings generated over $7,300 in royalties from Spotify alone. In 2015, the artist in the same position had earned around $350: in just ten years, royalties have increased more than twenty-fold. More than one in ten of the artists now generating more than $100,000 a year on Spotify were included in Fresh Finds, the platform's early career programme dedicated to emerging artists. To date, there are more than 1,600 artists that Spotify has helped to surface in the early stages and who have subsequently built six-figure careers.

In 2025, more than a third of artists who generated $10,000 or more in royalties from Spotify were independent or started their careers as independents, releasing their music independently. The year was also marked by the largest annual payment of music publishing royalties in the platform's history. In the last two years alone, Spotify has paid around $5 billion to publishers and the collecting societies representing authors. Summing up, the platform has paid something like USD 70 billion into the coffers of the global record industry since its inception.