The 2025 Spotify Loud and Clear report has been published and as with previous years it is full of BIG numbers and lots of dollar signs, such as those in the statement that Spotify has paid the music industry over $10 billion in 2024, bringing the all-time payouts to the music industry to a total of nearly $60 billion.
But to understand the report there is a more important number: thirty-one.
Thirty-one is the number of times Spotify refers to recording artists “generating” royalties. As such, when the report states that only 110,500 recording artists worldwide were paid more than $5K (4585€) for the streaming of their entire catalogue on Spotify in 2024, this amount refers to the value that the catalogue created and not what is effectively being paid out to performers. Knowing that most of this money goes to record labels and that a CMU Study on Performer Payments shows that only 10,6% is effectively paid out to the recordings artists, the amount of performers that received more than $5K from Spotify streams in 2024 will not be more than the mere 22,100 that generated over $50K.
By presenting numbers showing payments to the industry, Spotify attempts to avoid the continuing criticism from performers of all levels that the amount they receive from streaming is ridiculously low. This sentiment was recently expressed by the European Parliament and confirmed by a survey of more than 9500 performers, 87.6% of whom believe that streaming revenues are not distributed in a fair way.
So if this report is Spotify’s way of being transparent, let us be transparent about some things Spotify did not mention.
- If Spotify would like performers to receive money and not just generate it, they should drop their opposition to equitable remuneration, a payment which would go directly to performers via their CMOs from the billions of dollars that performers generate for Spotify. No performers, no Spotify.
- Spotify (and other Digital Service Providers) have blatantly infringed copyright since day one. Existing laws provide that they must pay performers for “push” services similar to e.g. Spotify Radio but they continue to fail to do so.
- Non-featured artists (session musicians) receive no money from streaming. Regardless of how much money their performances generate for Spotify and record labels, they receive the sum of $0.00.
- Spotify’s focus is not on performers’ remuneration – it’s on share price and executives’ remuneration, two of whom have received $1B+ from selling just some of their shareholdings.
The 2025 Loud and Clear report is not dishonest. It is however – like all good marketing out there – misleading, and policy makers should not be fooled by the big numbers and celebratory hype. Digital Service Providers like Spotify should not be the performers’ enemy, but until they cooperate in a fairer distribution of streaming revenue, they should not pretend to be their friend.
In other words, the music industry might be happy with these numbers, but the musicians are not.
