Spotify Loud & Clear: 5% of artists generate above $1,000 in annual industry royalties

Contents

Executive summary: Spotify’s playlist model favours established artists

The music industry has no plan B outside streaming

User value varies: Premium subscribers account for 87% of Spotify’s revenues

Streaming consumption is more catalogue-heavy than music purchases

Spotify’s official curation drives commercial success

Spotify’s streaming royalty pot favours a handful of superstars

95% of active artists* generate under $1,000 per year; 0.02% generate over $1 million

Established artists generate fifteen times more industry royalties than breakthrough acts

Half of Spotify tracks* have generated industry revenues of less than a dollar

Music festivals & events, the bread and butter for niche artists, plummeted last year

Methodology

List of charts/tables

Global recorded music industry revenues by source ($bn)

Spotify monthly users and revenue by service tier, Q4 2020

Share of chart eligible sales in 2018 by album’s year of release (%)

Share of New Music Friday* songs (by rank) then appearing in Spotify daily charts, 2017

Growth of artists by annual industry revenues paid out by Spotify

Artists grouped by industry payouts from Spotify in 2020 ($)

Industry revenues generated by different artist categories, 2020 ($bn)

Number of tracks by estimated industry revenues, 2020

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