- Spotify has released its full Loud and Clear 2026 report
- The company paid $11 billion to the industry, representing 70% of its total revenue.
- Claims to have saved the industry, but artist royalties are growing at a stagnant rate
Spotify has found it difficult to shake off the harsh criticism it often receives over its artists’ royalties, but its Loud and Clear report is the streaming giant’s chance to offer transparency, and its full 2025 overview just dropped.
Since 2021, Spotify has been publishing its annual Loud and Clear report, a way for the music platform to give subscribers and creatives an idea of artists’ royalty payments, as well as mapping the current state of the music streaming economy.
I attended Spotify’s Loud and Clear briefing earlier this week and overall, Spotify’s numbers have grown in a multitude of areas, and the streaming giant is also set to announce its role in saving the music industry from piracy ahead of its 20th birthday next month. “20 years ago, this industry was struggling to survive,” a Spotify spokesperson said, adding that the platform was created “not to disrupt a healthy system, but to help rebuild a broken one.”
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However, today’s statistics show that its artist payment system is also expanding at an alarmingly slow rate, despite the platform’s claim during the briefing that “artists make more money from Spotify than any other streaming service.” So what’s new this time?
For starters, Spotify’s total payout equaled more than $11 billion by 2025, compared to $10 billion in 2024. This figure is not new, as Spotify announced it at the beginning of the year. However, the company added that it was the “largest annual payment by any retailer in history,” a claim it also made during last year’s report.
Compared to last year, Spotify is seeing more artists earn more than $100,000 each year in royalties alone, increasing to 13,800 artists in 2025 (1,400 more than the previous year). According to Spotify, royalties for growing musicians are also accelerating, with more than a third of artists who earned more than $10,000 in annual royalties starting out as “DIY” artists (meaning they self-released music through independent distributors). But still, it is not a sustainable salary.
“Income opportunities go far beyond superstars”
Spotify made the above claim in its report, and while payout figures for lesser-known artists have increased from last year, it’s only by a small margin. The company also stated that “70% of (their) music revenues (go) to the industry on behalf of the artists and songwriters they represent.”
Our audio contributor and band singer, Carrie Marshall, knows firsthand the difficulties of making money through Spotify. “I think it’s absolutely true that Spotify helped save the music business from online piracy. And the music business is doing brilliantly in the streaming era; musicians, not so much,” he said.
“The collapse of recorded music sales, the shift from radio to streaming and the closure of so many grassroots venues means that, despite billions in streaming, it is harder than ever for artists to make money from their music,” he added.
Then there is the case of the grassroots premises, which Carrie also deals with. In 2025, Spotify generated a staggering $1.5 billion in live music revenue, which is attributed to its live events hub and local concert slate. On top of this, Spotify’s total revenue in 2025 equals approximately $17.2 billion when each of its quarterly earnings are added together, leaving around $6 billion to use after industry payments.
A lump sum of this is invested back into the business and no doubt goes towards funding new product features (some of which many users will use once and forget). But grassroots venues are still struggling despite Spotify’s move into live music.
“Streaming doesn’t fill the gap at the grassroots level because it uses a prorated payment system based on audience share, not pay per play, so most of the money goes to people like Bad Bunny while smaller artists earn little or nothing,” concludes Carrie Marshall.
So while Spotify has certainly had some positive impacts on the music industry over the past 20 years (and is the only streaming service to publish a report like Loud & Clear), many artists would argue that its numbers don’t tell the story of what it’s like to be a musician today.
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