Back in the early 2010s, the music industry was at a low point.
Piracy was rampant. Compact disc sales were on a steady decline. And the then-new audio streaming services, like Spotify, were taking hits from creators for paying low royalty rates.
Today, Spotify has grown into the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service and the highest-paying retailer globally — paying the music industry over $11 billion last year, up from $10 billion in 2024.
Nearly 14,000 artists earned $100,000 from Spotify royalties alone last year, the Swedish company said in a post Wednesday, adding that independent artists and labels accounted for about half of all payments.
“A decade ago, a lot of the questions were really fair. Spotify had to be able to prove out if it could scale as an economic engine. People didn’t know if streaming would scale as a model,” said Sam Duboff, Spotify’s global head of marketing and policy of music business, in an interview.
Duboff said Spotify’s payouts aren’t “plateauing — we’re still growing that royalty pool on Spotify more than 10% per year.”
He credits the streaming platform’s growth to “incentivizing people” to “pay for music again” — the service costs $12.99 a month — by providing personalized experiences and global accessibility.
The company, founded in 2006, serves more than 751 million users, including 290 million subscribers, in 184 markets.
“The average Spotify premium subscriber listens to 200 artists every month, and nearly half of those artists are discovered for the first time,” Duboff said. “When you build an experience where people can explore and fall in love with music, it inspires them to upgrade to premium and keep paying.”
The platform offers a wide variety of playlists, curated by editors like the up-and-comer-driven Fresh Finds or rap’s latest, RapCaviar. There are also personal playlists generated for users, such as the weekly round-up Discover Weekly and the daily mix of tunes called the “daylist.”
Spotify considers itself the first step toward “an enduring career” for today’s indie artists. Last year, more than a third of artists making $10,000 in royalties on the platform started by self-releasing their music through independent distributors.
“Streaming, fundamentally, is about opportunity and access. It’s artists from all over the world releasing music the way they want to and reaching a global audience from Day One,” Duboff said. He adds that when fans have a choice, they will discover new genres and music cultures that may have otherwise languished in obscurity.
The company, with a large presence in L.A.’s Arts District, emphasizes that the roster of artists on its platform who earn significantly more money — well into the millions — is no longer limited to the few. A decade ago, Spotify’s top artist made around $10 million in royalties. Today, the platform’s top 80 artists generate over $10 million annually. Some of 2025’s top artists globally were Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift and the Weeknd.
Spotify says those who aren’t household names can earn six figures, with more than 1,500 artists earning $1 million last year.
Damon Krukowski, a musician and the legislative director for United Musicians & Allied Workers, argues that Spotify’s money isn’t necessarily going to artists — it’s going to their labels.
Those without labels usually upload music through distributors such as DistroKid and CD Baby. These platforms charge a small fee or commission. For example, DistroKid’s lowest-level subscription is $24.99 a year, and the site states users “keep 100% of all your earnings.”
“There are zero payments going directly to recording artists from Spotify,” Krukowski asserts. “Recording artists deserve direct payment from the streaming platforms for use of our work.”
The advocacy group, which has mobilized more than 70,000 musicians and music workers, recently helped draft the Living Wage for Musicians Act to address the streaming industry. The bill, introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives last fall, calls for a new streaming royalty that would directly pay artists a minimum of one penny per stream.
In the Q&A section of Spotify’s Loud and Clear website, the streamer confirms that it “doesn’t pay artists or songwriters directly. We pay rights holders selected by the artist or songwriter, whether that’s a record label, publisher, independent distributor, performance rights organization, or collecting society.”
Instead of following a penny-per-stream model, Spotify pays based on the artist’s share of total streams, called a “streamshare.”
