In a blog post, the Swedish streaming giant said its 2025 payouts grew by more than 10% compared with the previous year. The company also noted that independent artists and labels accounted for half of all royalties, highlighting the platform’s importance to non-major music creators.
Spotify has been prioritising the retention of existing artists and the recruitment of new talent as it faces increasing competition from rivals such as YouTube and Apple in the music-streaming market. YouTube, for its part, said in October that it had paid out more than $8 billion to the music industry over a 12-month period from July 2024 to June 2025.
Spotify’s blog emphasised that the company pays out about two-thirds of all music revenue to the industry—“almost 70% of what we take in”—meaning that as Spotify’s revenues rise, so do payouts.
The company said it reinvests the portion it keeps back into the platform, aiming to expand other content formats such as podcasts, videos and audiobooks.
Spotify has also recently raised the prices of its premium subscription plans in several markets to boost profitability and capitalise on its large user base, which stood at 713 million monthly active users at the end of the third quarter.
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