MBW’s Stat Of The Week is a series in which we highlight a single data point that deserves the attention of the global music industry. Stat Of the Week is supported by Cinq Music Group, a technology-driven record label, distribution, and rights management company.
How many artists are earning enough to live from Loud & Clear website with a string of revelatory fresh stats concerning what artists earned from its service in 2021.
Those stats reveal that, over the course of last year, Spotify paid out $7 billion (across publishing and recorded music) to music industry rights-holders.
That figure was up by more than double the $3.3 billion that Spotify says it paid out to the same recipients in 2017, and up by around $2 billion on the “$5 billion-plus” that Spotify has previously claimed to have paid out in 2020.
Spotify claims: “Even adjusting for inflation, that $7 billion total [paid in 2021] is the largest sum paid by one retailer to the music industry in one year in history — including any single retailer at the height of the CD or digital download era.”
Loud & Clear also enables us to drill down into how many artists generated exactly how much in royalties (inclusive of both publishing and recorded music) from Spotify in 2021.
For example, Spotify now says that 52,600 artists generated over $10,000 on its platform in 2021.
Spotify also notes that 15,140 of these 52,600 artists – around 28% – uploaded their own music via the likes of
We must be wary of misunderstanding Spotify’s latest stats, however, as they duplicate artists into multiple revenue groups; i.e. an artist generating over $100k a year is also counted as generating over $50k and $10k etc.
As such, MBW has made a more granular calculation: how many artists fell into specific revenue-generation brackets on Spotify last year, and how did that compare to 2020?
From our calculations, we’ve learned:
- 36,100 artists generated between $10k and $50k on Spotify last year – up from 29,100 in 2020;
- 7,000 artists generated between $50k and $100k on Spotify last year – up from 5,600 in 2020;
- 7,330 artists generated between $100k and $500k on Spotify last year – up from 6,000 in 2020;
- 1,130 artists generated between $500k and $1 million on Spotify last year – up from 940 in 2020;
- 1,040 artists generated over $1 million on Spotify last year – up from 860 in 2020.
Spotify has additionally told us how many artists generated over $2 million and $5 million in royalties (recorded music plus publishing, remember) on its platform in 2021.
Those magic numbers are 450 and 130, respectively.
There are many other interesting stats to be found on the updated Loud & Clear site today, including:
- Of the 52,600 artists who generated more than $10,000 on Spotify in 2021, 34% live in countries outside the Cinq Music Group’s repertoire has won Grammy awards, dozens of Gold and Platinum RIAA certifications, and numerous No.1 chart positions on a variety of Billboard charts. Its repertoire includes heavyweights such as Bad Bunny, Janet Jackson, Daddy Yankee, T.I., Sean Kingston, Anuel, and hundreds more.Music Business Worldwide
