Overview
- The $11 billion total marked the largest annual payment to music from any retailer and brought Spotify’s cumulative payouts to about $70 billion.
- Spotify said roughly half of 2025 royalties went to independent artists and labels.
- The company asserted it now represents about 30% of recorded-music revenue, with its payouts rising by more than 10% compared with roughly 4% growth from other sources.
- More than 12,500 artists generated over $100,000 on Spotify in 2025, up from 10,000 in 2024, though contractual splits govern what artists actually take home.
- Spotify outlined 2026 steps including artist verification, updated song credits, a SongDNA credits feature, expanded human editorial and live-show tools, funded by retaining roughly one-third of revenue and recent price increases.