Spotify paid the music industry $10 billion (£7.7 billion) in 2024, claiming it was the largest annual payment ever made by a single retailer. However, this announcement comes amid ongoing debates over how much artists and songwriters actually receive in royalties.
Earlier this year, several Grammy-nominated songwriters boycotted a Spotify-hosted awards event in protest of their streaming earnings. Addressing concerns, a Spotify spokesperson stated that the responsibility for distributing payments lies with record labels and publishers, not the streaming service itself.
Spotify clarified that it pays royalties to rights-holders—typically record labels, music publishers, and collection societies—rather than directly to artists or songwriters. Since artist earnings depend on their contracts with labels, Spotify claimed it has no insight into how funds are ultimately distributed.
Artist earnings vary, but a 2021 parliamentary committee heard that performers often receive around 16% of streaming royalties. This means that if a song generates £100,000 on Spotify, the artist may only take home £16,000 before tax. However, many musicians supplement their income through live performances and other revenue streams.
Spotify stated that over two-thirds of all music revenue is directed to recording and publishing rights-holders, and, like other streaming platforms, it does not operate on a per-stream payment model.
The figures were released in Spotify’s ‘Loud and Clear’ report, which aims to improve transparency around its payment structure. The 2024 payout marks an increase from the more than $9 billion (£7 billion) paid in 2023. The report also noted that the number of artists earning between $1,000 (£770) and $10 million annually from streaming royalties has tripled since 2017.
Taylor Swift was Spotify’s most-streamed artist globally, accumulating over 26 billion streams following the release of her double-length album ‘The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology’. Swift was previously involved in the streaming royalties debate, removing her music from Spotify in 2014 before returning in 2017.
More recent artist boycotts have been driven by different issues. For example, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell pulled their music from the platform in protest against Spotify’s association with podcast host Joe Rogan, though both artists have since returned.
Despite these developments, dissatisfaction over streaming royalties persists. A large-scale survey conducted in Europe last year found that approximately 70% of musicians were unhappy with their earnings from streaming revenue.
