Spotify released its latest Loud & Clear report. Let’s look at who got paid.
Spotify periodically publishes its Loud & Clear report, which looks at who streams what and who gets paid as a result. The full report can be found here, but let’s start with an executive summary.
- Spotify paid out US$5 billion in royalties in 2025. That’s double that of 2024.
- More than 1,500 artists were paid US$1 million in royalties in 2025. I quote: “Capturing just 1% of streams from 1% of listeners is enough to earn $1 million in annual royalties from Spotify.”
- This is wild: “More than 80% of artists earning $1M+ on Spotify have never had a Top-50 hit.”
- About 13,800 made at least US$100,000. That’s up 1,400 in a year.
- The 100,000th-highest-earning artist received US$7,300. Back in 2015, an artist with that same ranking earned US$350.
- In 2025, “nearly 13 million” people uploaded music to Spotify, an increase of three million over the last three years. That’s a lot of server space and energy consumption. And you have to wonder how many of those people got even one play.
- The number of “serious” people–i.e. music professionals–uploading music each year has been steady at 225,000.
- More than 30% of these serious people earned at least US$10,000 from Spotify.
- To underscore how streaming is flattening the world of music, songs from 16 different languages made the Spotify Top 50 in 2025.
Again, the whole report is available here.
