Spotify’s Record $10 Billion Payment to Music Industry in 2024
In a historic move, Spotify announced that it paid the music industry a staggering $10 billion in 2024, marking the highest annual payment ever made by a retailer. Despite this milestone, the debate over artists’ and songwriters’ royalties continues to rage on.
Earlier this year, a group of Grammy-nominated songwriters boycotted a Spotify-hosted awards event in protest of their streaming earnings.
Addressing the mounting concerns, a Spotify spokesperson reiterated that the responsibility for distributing the payments lies with record labels and publishers. The company emphasized that it pays royalties to rights holders and lacks visibility into the ultimate destination of the funds, as earnings are governed by artists’ contracts with their respective labels.
Spotify clarified that a significant portion of its music revenue, more than two-thirds, goes directly to recording and publishing rights-holders. Additionally, the streaming service, like others in the industry, does not operate on a per-stream payment model.
These revelations were part of Spotify’s Loud and Clear report, which aims to provide transparency regarding its financial contributions to the music industry. The $10 billion payment in 2024 marked a significant increase from the $9 billion disbursed in 2023. The report also highlighted a notable uptick in the number of artists earning annual royalties ranging from $1,000 to $10 million, with a three-fold increase since 2017.
Notably, Taylor Swift emerged as Spotify’s top artist globally, amassing over 26 billion streams in the year she released her double-length album, “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.”
