Spotify has revealed its latest annual music industry payout.
The streaming giant paid out more than $11 billion to the music industry last year – the largest annual payout to music creators from any retailer. It is also the biggest payout to the music industry in a year by any single retailer ever. This brings Spotify’s all-time payouts to nearly $70 billion.
Once again, independent artists and labels accounted for half of all royalties.
The payments to music industry rights-holders have increased from the 2024 total of $10 billion. The headline figure covers payments across the industry including artists, labels, songwriters and music publishers.
The 2025 total of $11bn represents more than 10% year-on-year growth, compared to roughly 4% growth across other industry income sources, according to Spotify’s update.
In a Spotify For Artists blog post, Charlie Hellman, Spotify head of music, wrote: “Spotify now represents roughly 30% of recorded music revenue – up from around 15% in 2017 – making Spotify the primary driver of revenue growth for music in 2025.”
He noted that there are now more artists generating over $100,000 a year from Spotify alone than were getting stocked on record store shelves at the height of the CD era.
Despite rampant misinformation about how streaming is working today, the reality is that this is an era full of more success stories and promise than at any point in history
Charlie Hellman
“That’s the real shift and extraordinary progress that these numbers represent,” wrote Hellman. “Despite rampant misinformation about how streaming is working today, the reality is that this is an era full of more success stories and promise than at any point in history.”
Subscriber numbers at Spotify hit 281 million in Q3 – more than a third of all premium global streaming.
“More than 750 million people around the world are now paying every month for music streaming, across all streaming services,” wrote “As that audience has grown, we’ve also raised prices. Since Spotify pays out two-thirds of all music revenue to the industry – almost 70% of what we take in – as Spotify revenues grow, music payouts have grown as well.
“What about the other third – the money Spotify keeps? That’s been our fuel to reinvest directly into the platform in ways that drive more people to pay for music streaming and continue to grow revenues for music. By doing all we can to innovate on behalf of the music industry, we’ve been able to deliver an unrivalled listening experience, helping connect artists with listeners who are most likely to care about their music.”
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