A few weeks ago, we informed you that Spotify reportedly generated $4.5 billion in revenue for independent artists and labels in 2023. The news came as a preview of Spotify’s annual Loud & Clear report. Now, the 2023 edition of the report has officially been released.
Spotify and music streaming in numbers
Every year, the Loud & Clear report, also called the Music Economics Report, provides insights into the economics of music streaming, particularly its process, players, and Spotify's role in it. This year, the streaming giant revealed it had paid a total of $48 billion to the music industry since its founding. In 2023 alone, Spotify generated $9 Billion for the industry.
It’s not only about the money that Spotify has generated for the music business; more importantly, it’s also about artists' financial empowerment on the platform. Spotify claims that its royalties are powering artists’ careers at all stages, aka all revenue thresholds, from $1,000 through $10 million per year. In fact, the number of artists generating at least $10K, $100K, and $1M per year has nearly tripled since 2017.
The streaming service has also highlighted its success in breaking barriers in music and the impact of music streaming on artists’ livelihoods and growing global diversity. According to their calculations, over half of the artists who generated at least $10K on Spotify (66,000 artists in total) are from countries where English is not their first language. Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, and Korean are among the most common languages in music performance after English.
Furthermore, songwriters generated record-breaking revenues in 2023. Reportedly, Spotify paid almost $4B to publishers, performance rights organizations, and collective societies — all representing songwriters — over the past two years. This implies that songwriters, publishers, and their CMOs are experiencing 2x the revenue ($5.5B in 2022) in the streaming era than they ever did in the CD/Sales era ($2.5B in 2001).
Finally, Spotify has examined the overwhelming impact streaming has on artists’ success and wealth in comparison to other revenue sources. According to Spotify, music streaming allows for more room for more artists than any other source, indicating real changes across the music industry.
For example, while a radio station spins the Top 40 hits and a record store offers the music of a few thousand artists, streaming enables even the 50,000th-ranked artists to generate at least $16.5K a year from Spotify alone (and likely $65K from recorded music overall). In other words, today, the 50,000th artist generates nearly 6x what the 50,000th artist would generate in 2007.
Eager to dive more into the numbers in the Loud & Clear report presented by Spotify? Check out Spotify’s official website for its top 10 findings for 2023.
