TOP SPOTIFY ARTISTS MONTHLY LISTENERS FOR FREE

The IFPI report notes that in 2020, publishers, songwriters and their Collective Management Organizations (CMOs – the orgs that collect publishing revenue around the world), earned $3.5 billion from streaming alone. Songwriters earned more revenue in 2020 than they did in 2001. I had no idea there were this many artists with over 1 million monthly listeners.Īlso, 718,000 songs have over 1 million streams! Over 9,000 artists on Spotify have over 1M monthly listeners In 2021, only 12% of US streams on Spotify were of the top 50 artists - meaning that revenue opportunities now reach far beyond the biggest stars.” “At the peak of the CD era, 25% of US sales were accounted for by the top 50 artists. The Music Industry in the CD era favored superstars twice as much as it does today But of course the major labels don’t want to take a pay cut. I think this split should be 50/50 – Publisher/Label (Songwriter/Artist). It’s because the major labels want to keep it this way. Why the discrepancy? Why do publishers and songwriters make so much less than labels and artists? Well, it actually has nothing to do with Spotify. For comparison, Apple Music keeps about the same.Ībout 80% of that money goes to the master rights holders (record labels / Artists) and about 20% goes to the publishing rights holders (publishers / Songwriters). In other words, Spotify keeps about a 33% commission. UnitedMasters… Best Music Distribution Comparison Spotify pays out 2/3 revenue to rights holders

TOP SPOTIFY ARTISTS MONTHLY LISTENERS FOR FREE

Some others work on a hybrid model like UnitedMasters, Songtradr, Landr, Horus where they give the artist the option whether they’d like to pay a small fee and keep 100% or distribute for free and give up a small commission. Others like CD Baby, Stem, AWAL, Symphonic keep a small commission between 9-15%. Major labels typically KEEP 82% – and of course only pay out their artists after they recoup their advance/expenses (which almost never happens).īut the self-released artists get to keep either all or most of their money.ĭistroKid, Tunecore, Amuse all allow you to keep 100% of your master royalties. Indie labels typically offer a 50/50 split. When it comes to label artists, we don’t actually know what the artist’s take-home amount is. In short, this is the number Spotify paid out for the artists’ work. Now to be clear, these figures are actually the number of artists whose catalogs generated both recording and publishing royalties. So when Spotify says 52,600 artists made at least $10,000, previously we didn’t know how many of them were with labels or not. My biggest gripe with the 2020 Spotify report was that it didn’t separate the label artists from the self-released artists. Let’s unpack some of these revelations, shall we? 15,140 self-released artists made at least $10,000 from Spotify in 2021 And it seems, at least from the data, that streaming is helping in this pursuit. I think we can all agree that all we want is for artists and songwriters to have successful, long-term careers.

Top spotify artists monthly listeners