Spotify Paid More Than $11 Billion to the Music Business in 2025: Loud & Clear Report

Spotify paid the music business more than $11 billion last year, the company revealed in its latest Loud & Clear report published Wednesday (March 11), bringing it to a total of $70 billion in payouts over the life of the streaming giant.

According to a post on the Loud & Clear website, that number represents a more than 10% increase year-over-year, which Spotify claims is “more than double the rate of other music industry income sources, which grew closer to 4%.” Half of those payouts, the company says, were generated by indie artists and labels versus “superstar artists.”

“These numbers reflect Spotify’s central role in today’s music economy: Not only as the largest platform for artists and the largest source of recorded music revenue, but also as the largest driver of the industry’s continued growth,” the post reads.

In 2025, more than 13,800 artists generated at least $100,000 a year from Spotify alone, nearly 1,400 more than last year, the company says. It adds that more than one-third of artists in the $100,00 club “have increased their royalties tenfold in under a decade,” while eight in 10 artists who crossed the $100,000 threshold in 2022 “have remained above it every year since.” Meanwhile, the company says 85% of artists at the $100,000 level are based outside the United States, adding, “The modern music economy is creating more career artists, in more countries, faster than ever before.”

At the $1 million level, the company says that more than 1,500 artists crossed the seven-figure threshold in 2025. “Many of them aren’t household names, and they may never trend globally,” the post reads. It adds: “The streaming era isn’t narrowing success to a few global stars. You don’t need global ubiquity to build a meaningful career.”

Speaking of global stars: The top 80 artists on Spotify all generated more than $10 million from the platform alone.

The company also highlights that it’s not just artists in the upper echelons whose Spotify earnings are growing. Last year, the company says, the 100,000^th highest-earning artist on the platform generated more than $7,300 in royalties from Spotify, whereas 10 years ago, the 100,00^th highest-earning artist generated just $350. That marks “a more than twentyfold increase in just a decade,” the post reads — a rate “three times faster” than the artist in the 10^th highest-earning spot.

Elsewhere in the post, Spotify trumpets its Fresh Finds playlist, which spotlights emerging artists, by noting that more than 10% of artists who generate more than $100,000 from the platform annually “were first playlisted” there. “That’s more than 1,600 artists who Spotify helped break early, and who have since gone on to build six-figure careers,” the post reads.

The company also touts the platform’s global reach, noting that just two years after debuting their music on Spotify, more than half of artists’ royalties come from outside their home countries, on average. The highest-earning artists on the platform are also geographically diverse: Last year, according to Spotify, the artists who generated more than $500,000 in royalties from the platform cut across 75 countries, up from 66 last year; while artists at the $10,000 level hail from more than 150 countries. Additionally, Spotify notes that last year, songs in 16 different languages reached the platform’s Global Top 50 chart, “more than double the number in 2020.”

On the songwriter front, Spotify says last year “marked the largest annual music publishing payout” in the history of the platform, with roughly $5 billion paid out “to the publishers and organizations representing songwriters” over the last two years.

You can check out all the stats at the Loud & Clear website here.