Streaming
Spotify: A good 1,250 artists with payments worth millions
Last year, Spotify paid out millions in proceeds to around 1,250 artists. photo
© Fabian Sommer/dpa
Spotify paid out more money to the music industry last year than ever before. Now the music streaming service provides information about how many listeners an artist needs to generate millions in revenue.
How do you make a million dollars a year as a musician? Spotify on? The music streaming market leader gives a rough guide in a report published on Tuesday: According to this, the million in revenue is within reach of 4 to 5 million listeners per month or 20 to 25 million monthly streaming views.
More artists break the million mark
Last year, around 1,250 artists managed to break the million mark. This was a significant increase compared to the 1,060 musicians who achieved this in 2022. A surprising finding about the number: More than 1,000 of the over 1,250 sales millionaires did not have a top 50 hit in the service’s global rankings last year. Spotify and the music industry point out that with the transition from CDs to streaming, musicians are getting clicks over a longer period of time than before thanks to the views of their songs.
New best value for payouts
Spotify’s payouts to the music industry reached a record high of over $9 billion last year. According to licensing agreements, around two thirds of Spotify’s revenue always goes to music companies and artists. The music service assumes that there are around 225,000 professional and aspiring artists and bands. Spotify estimates that musicians’ total earnings are about four times higher than what they earn on the service.
More than 600 million users
Last year, more than 10 million accounts uploaded at least one recording to Spotify. But around five million of them had fewer than 100 streams across their entire offering. The service stipulated last year that there would be no payouts for songs with fewer than 1,000 streams per year. The change affects tens of millions of songs, for which an average of only three US cents per month would be charged, Spotify emphasized.
The service had a total of 602 million users in the last quarter, of which 236 million were paying subscription customers.