Only 7,500 artists earned more than $100,000 on Spotify in 2020

Spotify’s Stream On announcement went down recently, and alongside announcing the launch of their new hi-fi service, the conference revealed how the streaming service progresses in helping more of their creators succeed through their platform.

Catch up on all the latest music industry news here.

By the end of 2020, Spotify had eight million creators while three years ago they only had three million. Spotify’s co-founder and CEO, Daniel Ek, expressed his belief that the service would continue to bloom exponentially, stating that ‘I believe that by 2025, we could have as many as 50 million creators on our platform.’

Similarly, Dawn Ostroff, former CW and Condé Nast Entertainment president and current chief content officer at Spotify, reaffirmed this view and let slide just how many artists managed to capitalise off the platform in a considerable manner.

‘Over the last four years, the number of recording artists whose catalogs generate more than $1 million a year across recording and publishing is up over 82%, to more than 800 artists,’ she said.

‘And the number generating more than $100,000 a year, that’s up 79%, to more than $7,500 artists.’

So, out of eight million artists on Spotify, about 7,500 artists earn more than $100,000 a year through streaming. Which is 0.09% of the eight million artists on the platform right now. 

Daniel Ek has previously spoken he wants Spotify to allow artists to live off their streaming income, but only the 7,500 artists out of eight million earn a decent year-end income. While Spotify continues to grow with more music and artists, and the subscription rate stays roughly the same in major countries, Spotify’s pay per stream rate has reportedly dropped according to analysts. 

Though the platform hasn’t officially disclosed how much they pay artists per stream, it has been calculated Spotify roughly pays between $0.003 to $0.005 per stream. 

Read more about Stream On and watch a video capture of the event here.