Spotify launched new website today, Loud & Clear, that details information on how money is distributed to artists via its platform. The website aims to answer the question of how small artists can benefit from putting their music on Spotify.
On the new website, Spotify writes, “Artists deserve clarity about the economics of music streaming. This site aims to increase transparency by sharing new data on the global streaming economy and breaking down the royalty system, the players, and the process. Artists want the opportunity to make a living from their work. We want that, too: Although more artists than ever are finding success through streaming, we’re nowhere near done, and we’ll keep pushing to grow the industry.”
Loud & Clear reveals that roughly 13,400 artists made over $50k in payouts from Spotify annually since 2017 – the number of artists who reach that figure has nearly doubled since 2017 as well. $50k is also an incredibly important number as it is the average income in the United States.
Just 870 artists made over a million, but that number has also nearly doubled since 2017. Around 7,800 artists tallied over $100k, and 1,820 with over $500k. On the other end, just shy of 185k recording artists totaled over $1k in payouts from Spotify, also an impressive number. It is also important to note that Spotify is home to only around a third of global subscriptions to music streaming services, suggesting that even artists in the middle brackets could be making much more than what they benefit from Spotify.
Streaming services have constantly been under fire on how they pay artists. However, Spotify has defended its ad-supported free tier, compared to all other streaming services which require payment to unlock the full catalog of growing artists. The service has shared that they will not increase the price for users in the U.S. anytime soon, although that could be possibility for future growth. A new test project was also announced last fall that will allow artists to promote their music on the platform via personalized playlist recommendations.
Spotify CEO and founder, Daniel Ek, shares, “We’ll continue to empower the most talented artists in the world to turn their passion into a profession, grow the money paid to rights holders, diversify and expand the number of professional artists succeeding, and propel the music industry forward.”
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