Spotify maintains it's paying musicians a lot, actually

Spotify has caught a lot of heat over the past month. First, a bunch of songwriters boycotted its Grammy party over lost royalties, and then Björk grabbed the mic and called the streaming platform “probably the worst thing that has happened to musicians” in an interview last week. There’s really no coming back from a public Björk condemnation, but Music Business VP David Kaefer is giving it his best shot. In a new online missive, Kaefer shared that the company paid out “$10 billion to the music industry” in 2024, ten times more than they had a decade ago. 

Despite these increases, however, there’s still a lot of vitriol over Spotify’s pay structure. Sure, a decent chunk of that did go to the artists—the release states that “well over 10,000 artists generate over $100,000 per year from Spotify alone”—but it seems to suck for most of those beneath the Bad Bunnys and Taylor Swifts of the world. In a followup post on Twitter (X), Spotify wrote that it (and other streaming services) pay “two thirds of every dollar generated from music as royalties to rights holders, who then pay artists and songwriters based on their agreements.” This gets sticky though, as the company recently started “bundling” those royalties between multiple publishing companies. That means the company still pays out the same amount, but everyone gets a little less than they would if the pool of recipients were smaller. “It is very nice to be individually honored, but it is better for me and my entire songwriter community to be paid fairly for our art. There are no songs without songwriters,” Jessie Jo Dillon, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, said earlier this month of her decision to boycott.

Spotify’s solution? Double the amount of paying subscribers from over 500 million currently to 1 billion in the future. This is “a realistic goal we should collectively set,” Kaefer’s post reads, before laying out the company’s three-pronged strategy to achieve it. Those prongs include retention through curated playlists and the AI DJ (which the company characterizes as a “surprise-and-delight moment”), conversion of free-tier to premium subscribers, and more global spread. 

The note also cites a study from MIDiA Research that indicates that Spotify represents “more than half of indies’ streaming revenue.” “What this indicates is that Spotify’s model is uniquely enabling more room for more artists to find success and ultimately sustain a career in music, demonstrating real change across the music business,” the company concludes. They just need even more of your and your friends’ money to do it.