Spotify Paid Out More Than $11bn to Music Industry in 2025

Spotify has paid out more than $11bn (£8.7bn) to the music industry in 2025, marking what the company says is the largest annual payment to music creators by any retailer in history.

The figure, revealed in a blog post by Charlie Hellman, Spotify’s head of music, represents a rise of more than 10% on 2024 payouts and comes as streaming continues to dominate the global recorded music business. According to Spotify, independent artists and labels once again accounted for roughly half of all royalties paid out last year.

Hellman framed the milestone as evidence of a structural shift in how artists make a living, arguing that streaming success is no longer limited to a tiny elite. “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,” he wrote, positioning streaming as a broader and more accessible economy than the physical formats that preceded it.

Spotify currently accounts for around 30% of global recorded music revenue, the company said, and was the primary driver of industry growth in 2025. While Spotify’s payouts grew by more than 10%, other income streams across the industry increased by closer to 4%, reinforcing the platform’s central role in the modern music ecosystem.

The growth has been fuelled by an expanding audience willing to pay for streaming. More than 750 million people worldwide now subscribe to music streaming services, according to Spotify, which has also raised prices in recent years. The company reiterated that it pays out around two thirds of its revenue to the music industry, nearly 70% of what it takes in, with the remaining third reinvested into the platform.

That reinvestment, Hellman said, is increasingly focused on helping artists cut through an overcrowded landscape. With more than 100,000 new songs uploaded every day, emerging musicians are competing not just with their peers but with the entire history of recorded music. Spotify’s priority for 2026, he said, is to help new artists form “real connections” with fans.

Among the initiatives outlined is a renewed emphasis on artist storytelling and video. Spotify plans to surface more contextual information about songs and creators, from behind the scenes footage to explanations of how tracks are made. An upcoming feature called SongDNA will allow listeners to explore the collaborators behind a song and trace creative links across different artists’ catalogues.

The company also addressed growing concerns around artificial intelligence and fraud. Hellman said Spotify would introduce changes to artist verification and song credit systems to combat impersonation, scams and low quality AI generated content designed to game streaming royalties. “It’s critical to ensuring listeners and rightsholders can trust who made the music they’re hearing,” he wrote.

Human curation remains another pillar of Spotify’s strategy, particularly through its editorial playlists, which can play a decisive role in breaking new artists. The company highlighted the impact of hand-picked playlists such as RADAR and RNB X, and said it plans to expand editorial programmes in 2026 while giving listeners more insight into the people behind the curation.

Live music also featured heavily in Spotify’s vision for the future. The platform says it has already helped generate more than $1bn in ticket sales by connecting artists with fans through ticketing partners, and plans to roll out new features aimed at turning streams into sold out shows.

Hellman closed by acknowledging the contradictions of the current music economy, describing it as an era of “unprecedented competition alongside unprecedented opportunity”. Spotify’s responsibility, he argued, is to ensure that its growth translates into sustainable careers for artists, not just bigger numbers on a balance sheet.