Spotify's New Revenue Data Shows Streaming Success

In its 2024 Loud & Clear report, released Wednesday, Spotify highlighted significant growth in artist earnings and diversity, emphasizing that more artists made more money in a broader range of languages throughout the year. 

According to the report, the number of artists earning substantial royalties from the platform continued to rise, with notable increases across various income brackets. Specifically, the number of artists making at least $10,000 grew by nearly 8% to 71,200, while those earning at least $100,000 increased by a similar percentage to 12,500. Even more striking, the number of artists generating $1 million or more in royalties—around 1,500—remained robust, with 80% of them not having a single track in Spotify’s Global Daily Top 50. This suggests that success on the platform isn’t limited to chart-topping superstars but extends to a wider, more diverse group of musicians.

A key point from the report is the global reach of these earnings. Spotify noted that artists from a variety of linguistic backgrounds are thriving, with eight languages—English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, Japanese, Korean, and Italian—each generating songs that earned $100 million annually in royalties on the platform. 

This marks a shift from a decade ago when English and Spanish dominated the high-earning landscape, reflecting a growing appetite for music in diverse languages among Spotify’s hundreds of millions of listeners worldwide. 

Additionally, more than half of the $1 million earners started their careers after 2010, and the majority of artists generating significant revenue see most of their royalties coming from outside their home markets, underscoring the platform’s role in connecting artists to a global audience.

Spotify also tackled a common critique in the report: the focus on per-stream payout rates as a measure of artist compensation. Sam Duboff, Spotify’s global head of marketing and policy for the music business, called this a “misconception,” arguing that it oversimplifies how artists are paid. Unlike a fixed per-stream rate, Spotify uses a “streamshare” model, where its total revenue from subscriptions and ads (after taking its 30% cut) is pooled and distributed to rights holders based on their proportion of total streams.