ROYALTY TYPESYour music generates two kinds of royalties on Spotify
Recording royaltiesThis is the money paid to recorded music rightsholders, which is distributed to artists via the licensor they selected to deliver their music — typically a record label or distributor.
Publishing royaltiesThe money paid to the songwriter(s) or owner(s) of a composition, covering both performance and mechanical rights. Payments are issued to publishers, performance rights organizations (PROs), and mechanical agencies based on the territory of usage.
ROYALTY CALCULATIONS
Royalties are calculated on streamshareSpotify, like every major streaming service, pays royalties based on an artist’s or songwriter’s share of overall streams across the platform — not based on a fixed per-stream rate.
  • Roughly two-thirds of Spotify’s music revenue (from Premium subscription fees and advertising) is allocated to recording and publishing royalties, with around four-fifths going to recording and one-fifth to publishing.
  • We pay rightsholders based on streamshare — their share of total streams in a given month. E.g., if an artist accounts for 1% of all streams in a particular country, their selected rightsholder(s) receive 1% of the recording royalties we pay there.
  • Rightsholders then pay artists and songwriters according to their individual agreements.
    • How the money flowsHow royalties flow from Spotify to youWhen your music is streamed on Spotify — whether on Premium or Free — royalties are calculated and paid to rightsholders. From there, the money moves through labels, distributors, publishers, and collective management organizations (CMOs), such as PROs and mechanical agencies, before it reaches artists and songwriters.

    This chart shows the typical paths for both recording and publishing royalties.

    Artists and songwriters may pay commissions or service fees from their income to managers, collaborators, or team members. These payments are separate from royalty payments.
    Loud & Clear - our annual music economics reportSee how artists at every level generated royalties on Spotify in 2024.
    Learn more
    Common myths about Spotify royalties

    Spotify pays royalties to artists’ and songwriters’ selected rightsholders, who then pay artists and songwriters based on their individual agreements.

    Fans don’t pay per song, and no major streaming service pays a fixed rate per stream. Royalties are based on streamshare.

    Spotify pays out roughly two-thirds of its revenue to recording and publishing rightsholders on behalf of the artists and songwriters they represent.

    GETTING PAID
    Register your musicTo ensure you’re receiving the publishing royalties owed to you, it’s essential to register your music.
  • Register your songs with a PRO, mechanical agency, or your publisher so song usage can be tracked and your songwriting royalties paid.
  • Make sure song titles, writer names, and splits are agreed upon and entered correctly. Typos or missing details can delay or block royalty payments.
    • Learn more
    GETTING PAID
    How to stay in control of your payoutsA few simple steps can help you avoid missed payments and give you a clearer view of how your royalties flow.
  • Understand your agreement type with your rightsholders, including the percentage each takes, any administrative costs, and the benefits they provide.
  • Take time to review your royalty statements. They show you exactly where your income comes from and what period it relates to.
  • Consider whether you have taken an advance and your current recoupment status.
    • Your questions, answered

    • Your royalty statements and online dashboards from your rightsholders should show a breakdown of your earnings, including usage details, the service and territory your income comes from, and the period it covers.

    • Premium subscriptions generate more revenue overall, so streams from Premium users contribute more to the total royalty pool than streams from Free users, whose plays are supported by advertising revenue. While Premium streams add more value to the pool, payouts may vary depending on factors like the listener’s country, subscription plan, and overall streaming volume, and are ultimately determined by each rightsholder’s streamshare.

    • The payout you receive will depend on both the royalties your music generated on Spotify, and the terms of your agreement with your label, distributor, publisher, and CMO.

      For artists, this can range from traditional label deals, where the label typically takes the majority share in exchange for marketing, promotional, and A&R support, to 50/50 partnerships and service or distribution models where artists keep nearly 100% of their earnings after fees.

      For songwriters, publishing deals vary too: traditional publishing deals, where the publisher controls and licenses the songs and provides creative support in exchange for a share of royalties; co-publishing agreements that give you a larger share; and admin-only agreements where you retain full ownership while paying a small admin fee. CMOs will also take an administrative fee before paying out royalties.

    • The rise of paid streaming has created a sustainable model where artists at all levels can thrive. There are more artists generating more money on Spotify than ever before. In fact, the number of artists generating royalties at every threshold on our Loud & Clear site — from $1,000 to $10 million per year — has at least tripled since 2017.

      In 2024, over 71,000 artists generated at least $10,000 from Spotify alone, and between 2017 and 2024, the 10,000th-ranked artist on Spotify has seen their royalties increase from $34K to $131K. Meanwhile, over 80% of the nearly 1,500 artists generating $1 million on Spotify never had a song in our Top 50 chart.

      And, we’re seeing continued success across the independent sector. In 2024, independent artists and labels collectively generated more than $5 billion from Spotify - representing about half of total Spotify royalties for another year.

      Streaming has fundamentally changed the music ecosystem, lowering barriers to entry for artists of all levels and democratizing access to audio for listeners across the world. Artists no longer need to be superstars with access to big budgets to create, distribute, and amplify their music globally.

    • In the streaming era, fans do not pay per song, no major streaming service pays per-stream, so we don’t believe that a “per-stream rate” is a meaningful number to analyze. All streaming services pay essentially the same way: Roughly two-thirds of music revenue is paid back to rightsholders based on their streamshare.

      So, if every service pays out the same way, why is the average payout per-stream different for each service?

      The calculation is simple: Total payouts ÷ total streams = the “per-stream rate.”

      So if users of a service don’t stream very much, the “per-stream rate” is higher. But the problem is that streaming more means people like the product and will continue to pay for music (and drive streams and money to a wider array of artists and songwriters). If you stream very little, you are less likely to continue being a Premium subscriber, which means less money for artists and songwriters.

      Spotify offers the most engaging service where users stream more each month. That’s why Spotify has been able to grow its subscriber base and have the highest total payouts by far: $10B+ in 2024, up 10x from a decade ago. Everyone in the industry should want more streams per user as opposed to less.

      Building a service that inspires listeners to stream lots and lots of music each month decreases the effective “per-stream rate” on Spotify but increases total payouts. We believe artists and songwriters care more about a larger paycheck than a higher “per-stream rate.”

    • Spotify invests heavily in detecting, preventing, and removing the royalty impact of artificial streams.

      We want to ensure that artificial streams have no benefit – and do not create any second-order negative impact on legitimate streams. Spotify’s policy is that when we detect any artificial streams, the following penalties are applied:

      - Those streams do not earn royalties
      - Those streams do not count toward public stream numbers or charts
      - Those streams do not positively influence recommendation algorithms

      Depending on the severity of the artificial streaming detected, additional penalties can include:

      - Removal of the song from Spotify playlists
      - The distributor of the track, after being informed of the artificial streaming by Spotify, may issue warnings, charge a penalty fee, suspend the user’s account, or remove the music from Spotify
      - Removal of the track from Spotify altogether, in cases where the track appears to be primarily a vehicle to enable artificial streaming

      In some cases with artificially streamed tracks, you may still see streaming spikes in your private Spotify for Artists data, even though associated royalties have been withheld and public metrics (all-time track stream counts and monthly listener count) have been adjusted. In other cases, we can detect and remove confirmed artificial streams before they reach your Spotify for Artists dashboard — which means you may be informed by your distributor of artificial streaming activity even though the streams aren’t visible in your Spotify for Artists. Either way, the royalty report from your rightsholder is the most accurate source of truth for understanding royalties generated from Spotify streams.

      You can read more about artificial streaming here.

    • In November 2023, we announced new policies to help protect and strengthen our music royalty ecosystem for emerging and professional artists. These policies were developed in consultation with industry partners — artist distributors, independent labels, major labels, label distributors, and artists and their teams.

      Today, Spotify hosts well over 100 million tracks. Tens of millions of them have been streamed between 1 and 1,000 times over the past year and, on average, those tracks generated $0.03 per month.

      Because labels and distributors require a minimum amount to withdraw (usually $2-$50 per withdrawal), and banks charge a fee for the transaction (usually $1-$20 per withdrawal), this money often doesn’t reach the uploaders. And these small payments are often forgotten about.

      But in aggregate, these small disregarded payments have added up to $40 million per year, which could instead increase the payments to artists who are most dependent on streaming revenue.

      Starting from April 2024, tracks must have reached a threshold of at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months to be included in the recorded music royalty pool calculation. Spotify makes no additional money under this model, and the policy has no impact on the total size of the music royalty pool paid out by Spotify; we will simply use the tens of millions of dollars annually to increase the payments to all eligible tracks, rather than spreading it out into $0.03 payments.

      It’s more impactful for these tens of millions of dollars per year to increase payments to those most dependent on streaming revenue — rather than being spread out in tiny payments that typically don’t even reach an artist (as they do not surpass distributors’ minimum payout thresholds). 99.5% of all streams are of tracks that have at least 1,000 annual streams, and each of those tracks will earn more under this policy.

      We also believe the policy will eliminate one strategy used to attempt to game the system or hide artificial streaming, as uploaders will no longer be able to generate pennies from an extremely high volume of tracks.

      There are no changes to how publishing royalties are calculated. This eligibility calculation only applies to recording royalties.

      For more details on this policy, check out the Spotify for Artists help center here.

    • The future of the music industry is being written, and we believe that aggressively protecting against the worst parts of Gen AI is essential to enabling its potential for artists, songwriters and producers.

      We envision a future where artists, songwriters and producers are in control of how or if they incorporate AI into their creative processes. As always, we leave those creative decisions to them, while continuing our work to protect them against spam, impersonation, and deception, and providing listeners with greater transparency about the music they hear.

      - We’ve introduced a new impersonation policy that clarifies how we handle claims about unauthorized AI voice clones (and other forms of unauthorized vocal impersonation), giving artists stronger protections and clearer recourse. Vocal impersonation is only allowed in music on Spotify when the impersonated artist has authorized the usage.

      - We’re rolling out a new spam filter to identify uploaders engaging in spam tactics (mass uploads, duplicates, search engine optimization (SEO) hacks, artificially short track abuse). Left unchecked, these behaviors can dilute the royalty pool and impact attention for artists playing by the rules. Our new music spam filter will protect against this behavior and help prevent spammers from generating royalties that could be otherwise distributed to professional artists and songwriters.

      - We’re helping develop and will support the new industry standard for AI disclosures in music credits, developed through DDEX. As this information on AI use is submitted through labels, distributors, and music partners, we’ll begin displaying it across the app. This standard gives artists and rightsholders a way to clearly indicate where and how AI played a role in the creation of a track—whether that’s AI-generated vocals, instrumentation, composition, or post-production. By supporting an industry standard and helping to drive its wide adoption, we can ensure listeners see the same information, no matter which service they’re listening on. And ultimately, that preserves trust across the entire music ecosystem, as listeners can understand what’s behind the music they stream. We see this as an important first step that will undoubtedly continue to evolve.

    • In addition to generating revenue through royalties, artists are able to expand their revenue sources through opportunities such as ticketing and merch.

      We’ve partnered with concert & festival ticketing companies around the world to automatically list your shows on Spotify, and promote them across the Live Events feed, Now Playing view, and more. Over the last year, 228,000 artists had concerts listed on Spotify; 182,000 had those listings clicked on by fans; and 74,000 sold tickets as a result.

      And through our Shopify integration, you can connect your merch store directly to your Spotify artist profile to showcase products like t-shirts, vinyl, tote bags, and much more. This lets fans discover and buy your merch while streaming your music, creating a seamless way to grow sales and strengthen your connection with listeners.

      You can read more about growing your business on Spotify here.