Spotify, a streaming music service that offers over 80 million songs to its users has become one of the most popular music services. But many artists have raised the questions: how much do artist make from the platform and why doesn’t Spotify pay artists directly?
The answer is actually quite simple. Spotify does not have the legal right to pay artists directly. Instead, it pays royalties to the rights holders, or entities that own the copyright to the songs. This includes record labels, publishers, and songwriters.
When a song is released, the artist has to assign the copyright to a rights holder. This means that the rights holder owns the copyright to the song and has the exclusive right to distribute and profit from it without further permission from the artists. The rights holder then licenses the song to streaming services like Spotify. This license gives Spotify the right to stream the song using their server, but does not give them the right to pay the artist directly.
This system has been in place for a long time and is not exclusive to Spotify. All music streaming services work in this way, including Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal etc. However, there are some streaming services that do pay artists directly.
According to Spotify’s website, the company calculates royalties using streamshare by tallying the total number of streams in a given month and determining what proportion of those streams were people listening to music owned or controlled by a particular rights-holder.
Additionally, contrary to recent reports in the media, Spotify does not pay artist royalties according to a per-play or per-stream rate says Spotify. The royalty payments that artists receive might vary according to differences in how their music is streamed or the agreements they have with labels or distributors. Therefore artist do not “earn” on Spotify and it is not possible to use one formula to calculate all earnings artist may generate or get for their music.
Difference between Spotify and other streaming platforms
They sought to set the record straight on many of these concerns in “Loud and Clear” online portal.
Spotify said they pay 2/3 of the revenue generated to rights holders both from the paid streaming tier and the advertisement lead-free (to consumer) tier. In other words, whether you pay for the premium Spotify or use the free version as many people will do in Jamaica and the Caribbean, they will pay rights holders 2/3 of the revenue.
They also indicated that there is no single uniform way that artists are paid per stream. It is based on a variety of factors that are unique to each artist and if an artist says they make X amount, that amount is specific to that artist only.
Spotify does not know how much artists are paid and neither will anyone who use only their data online because they do not know.
However, according to their last Loud and Clear update Spotify paid music rights holders more money than ever in 2021: $7+ billion, up from $5+ billion in 2020.
Additionally, over 1,000 artists generated $1 million on Spotify alone in 2021. An increase from 2020, when 870 artists generated over $1,000,000 and compared to 2017 when only 450 artists did those numbers.
The number of streams of late on Spotify are less hit-driven, meaning not only the hits are doing big numbers, so more artists and rights holders are seeing success.
Swedish entrepreneur and founder of Spotify Daniel Ek, says that, “the music industry has grown by 44% since 2014 and that has been driven by streaming. Of this, Spotify has contributed $5B and makes up twenty percent of recorded industry revenue. This is more than any other streaming service.”
For 2022, Sean Paul is once again the most streamed dancehall act on Spotify globally for the year ending 2022. He also has the most streamed dancehall song on the platform, No Lie Ft. Dua Lipa.
The dancehall-Pop collab has also surpassed the one billion views on YouTube , five years after its release. It’s the Jamaican superstar’s first song as a lead artist to enter the billion views club on the Google owned platform.
The 49-year-old Grammy Award winner told WMV in an interview in April that he was happy about the global impact his music continue to have with audiences.
“Feels good to know that you can do songs and they just grow and grow and grow,” he said. “Cause when No Lie first came out that was a dope song. Nuff people loved it. It went on a lot of likkle streaming vibes and it just kept going. So awesome!” he stated.
Other Sean Paul hits to surpass a billion views as a featured artist include Clean Bandit’s Rockabye (2016), which is currently at 2.7 billion views, and Sia’s Cheap Thrills (2017), which sat at 1.7 billion views for most of the year. His other top dancehall tracks on Spotify this year include Temperature at No. 3, Go Down Deh with Spice and Shaggy at No. 6 and Get Busy at No. 8.
Burna Boy’s global smash hits are classified by Spotify as dancehall and he has 4 songs in the top ten on #SpotifyWrapped2022.
Last Last which has surpassed 2 billion streams comes in at No. 2, Location with Dave at No. 5, For My Hand featuring Ed Sheeran at No. 7, and On The Low at No 10.
Burna Boy shows up as the second most streamed dancehall act behind Sean, followed by Shaggy, Stefflon Don, Shenseea, Popcaan, Damian Marley, Vybz Kartel, Spice and Koffee.
Top 10 Reggae & Dancehall Songs Globally on #Spotifywrapped2022
Bob Marley & The Wailers return as the top reggae act globally. Last year, the Wailers appeared separately as they did this year at No. 9. The legendary group also has six of the top ten most played reggae songs globally. Musical Youth is the new entry on this year’s list of reggae artist at No. 4. The group’s reggae classic “Pass The Dutchie” is the No.1 most streamed reggae song on Spotify for the year. The Mighty Diamonds cover his the U.K. charts this year after it got two placements in the Netflix TV series “Stranger Things” and the group’s Drummer Fredrick Waite died at age 55.
“Pass the Dutchie” also hit number 18 on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Streaming Songs chart in the U.S.
This is the song’s first modern year end chart appearance after it reached No. 1 in the UK and No.10 on the US Billboard Hot 100 when it was first released 40 years ago. SInce then it has held the No. 1 position in five other countries, and has sold more than five million copies worldwide including a Gold certification in the U.K. in 1982.
The song appeared on the group’s debut studio album, The Youth of Today, which peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard 200 and No. 24 on the UK chart.
See complete list of top reggae acts and songs below:
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