Loud & Clear 2024 is Spotify‘s annual report on music streaming. It provides artists and fans around the world with a valuable resource on the big news in the streaming economy.
Who is making money? How much are they grossing? How has this evolved over the years? Spotify continues to be the only music streaming platform that publishes this level of data on the annual revenue generated by artists.
In short, if you have no time to dive into the data, here is a small summary:
Revenue and Growth:
- Spotify paid out over $9 billion to the music industry in 2023, nearly tripling the amount from 6 years ago.
- Independent artists generated nearly $4.5 billion on Spotify in 2023, representing half of Spotify’s total revenue for the first time.
- The number of artists earning $1 million+, $100,000+, and $10,000+ nearly tripled since 2017 on Spotify.
Language and Cultural Diversity:
- More than half of the 66,000 artists earning over $10,000 on Spotify come from non-English speaking countries.
- Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, and Korean dominate non-English performances, while Hindi, Indonesian, Punjabi, Tamil, and Greek saw strong growth in 2023.
Publishing Revenue:
- Spotify paid nearly $4 billion to publishing rightsholders in the last 2 years, benefiting songwriters and composers.
- Music publishing revenue from streaming ($5.5B in 2022) is now over double the peak CD era revenue ($2.5B in 2001).
Artist Career Growth:
- Nearly half of the 23,400 artists earning $10,000+ in 2017 generated over $50,000 (likely $200,000+ total) in 2023.
- 4 out of 5 artists earning $10,000+ in 2017 earned at least that much again in 2023 on Spotify.
A breakdown of the full 2024 report
Breaking the language barrier
More than half of the artists who have earned at least $10,000 on Spotify come from countries where English is not the first language. The fact that streaming has lowered barriers to entry for artists is old news. But the impact on their lives, and the global diversity of that impact, is becoming increasingly evident.
Of the 66,000 artists who have generated at least $10,000 on Spotify alone – and probably $40,000 across all recorded revenue sources – more than half are from countries where English is not the first language.
Artists who in the past would have struggled to succeed are now finding their audiences. This behavior makes the music industry an increasingly accurate mirror of the diverse world in which we live.
Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, and Korean dominate the performance charts in languages other than English.
Hindi, Indonesian, Punjabi, Tamil, and Greek, on the other hand, posted strong increases in 2023.
A record-breaking year for independents
In 2023, independent artists generated nearly $4.5 billion on Spotify. This is the first time in Spotify’s history that independent artists generate half of Spotify’s total revenue. Spotify in 2023 earned more than $9 billion.
With a total of nearly $4.5 billion, this represents a 4-fold increase over 2017. This is the highest amount ever generated by a single retailer in a single year.
More money at every level
The number of artists generating at least $1,000,000, $100,000, and $10,000 has nearly tripled since 2017. Spotify’s royalties are supporting artists’ careers at all stages of their journey.
The number of artists generating revenue at each level shared on the site – from $1,000 up to $10 million per year – has nearly tripled since 2017. These figures correspond to the revenue generated through Spotify alone.
If earnings from other services are taken into account, artists’ revenues quadruple (taking into consideration concert ticket sales and merchandising).
Unexpected millionaires
Many of the artists who generated at least $1 million on Spotify in 2023 are not necessarily household names and did not need a “hit” to have a successful year. Eighty percent of them did not reach the Top 50 on Spotify’s Daily Global Songs chart.
In the age of streaming, the charts are never big enough to contain all the artists who achieve success. Fan tastes are more diverse and royalties continue to rise (over $9 billion!), which means more revenue for a wider range of artists.
Spotify’s record payments
For another year, Spotify set a record for the highest annual payment to the music industry: more than $9 billion. This figure has nearly tripled in the past six years. They represent a significant portion of the more than $48 billion Spotify has paid out since its founding.
Each year, Spotify pays out more and more money in streaming royalties, resulting in record revenues and growth for rights holders on behalf of artists and songwriters.
These rightsholders include record labels, publishers, independent distributors, corporations, and regulatory and rights organizations.
Music publishing reaches a new peak
Over the past two years, Spotify has paid out nearly $4 billion to publishing rights holders representing authors.
Authors, through their publishing rights holders, are generating record revenues, driven by streaming.
In the past two years, Spotify has paid nearly $4 billion to publishers, rights-collecting societies, and management companies representing them.
According to the Global Value of Music Copyright, publishers, songwriters, and their CMOs are recording more than twice as much revenue ($5.5 billion in 2022) in the streaming era than they ever had in the CD era ($2.5 billion in 2001).
Contextualized numbers
Spotify is focused on artists who depend most on streaming as a source of income: the 225,000 emerging and professional artists on Spotify in 2023.
Over 10,000,000 had uploaded at least a single track.
About 8,000,000 had fewer than ten tracks overall, and over 5,000,000 had fewer than 100 total streams in their catalog instead.
More and more artists are becoming successful and, as a result, more and more people want to pursue this path.
Artist Growth
Almost half of the artists who generated more than $10,000 on Spotify in 2017 are now generating more than $50,000 and probably $200,000 total from all their revenue sources.
On Spotify, artists’ careers are not only born but grow and strengthen. Spotify’s goal is to help, year after year, emerging and professional artists make a living from their work.
Four out of five artists who generated at least $10,000 in 2017 generated at least the same amount last year.
Of the 23,400 artists who generated $10,000 in 2017, nearly half generated more than $50,000 in 2023 and probably $200,000 total across all recorded revenue sources.
The streaming opportunity
A radio station streams only Top 40 songs; a record store sells the music of a few thousand artists.
In 2023, 50,000 artists generated at least $16,500 on Spotify and probably $65,000 from recorded music in general.
Today, streaming has enabled an ever-increasing number of artists to achieve success, contributing to a genuine shift in the music industry.
The vast majority of artists on Spotify would not have found a place on store shelves.
If one were to list all artists on Spotify, in order of earnings, even the 50,000th artist on the charts would have generated at least $16,500 from Spotify alone.
Find out more on Load and Clear.
