Spotify says it paid $11 billion to the music industry in 2025

Spotify paid $11 billion to the music industry in 2025.

Spotify’s Head of Music, Charlie Hellman, has announced that Spotify paid more than $11 billion to the music industry in 2025. This represents year-on-year growth of more than 10%, bringing the company’s all-time royalty payouts to nearly $70 billion. Hellman’s blog post states that the figure is “the largest annual payment to music from any retailer in history”. Indeed, the $11 billion payout has increased from $10 billion in 2024 and $9 billion in 2023.

Independent artists and labels account for half of all of Spotify’s royalties. The other half comprises independent distributors, performance rights organizations, and collecting societies. In his blog post, Hellman says that Spotify was “the primary driver of industry revenue growth in 2025… Today, Spotify accounts for roughly 30% of recorded music revenue.” For context, Spotify’s 10% royalty payout growth is more than double that of other industry income sources. These grew just 4% by comparison.

Music streaming continues to outpace physical record sales.

Spotify’s close rival, YouTube Music, reported in October that it paid more than $8 billion between July 2024 and June 2025. This was up from $6 billion for the 12 months between July 2021 and June 2022. Hellman states that “there are now more artists generating over $100k/year from Spotify alone than were getting stocked on record store shelves at the height of the CD era… Despite rampant misinformation about how streaming is working today, the reality is that this is an era full of more success stories and promise than at any point in history.”

Spotify’s record royalty payouts come shortly after the company raised its subscription prices in the US. Addressing the rate hikes, Hellman says that “At the end of the day, growth is driven by fans… As that audience has grown, we’ve also raised prices. Since Spotify pays out two-thirds of all music revenue to the industry – almost 70% of what we take in – as Spotify revenues grow, music payouts have grown as well.”

Spotify is due to release its Q4 2025 financial results on February 10, 2026. This will detail the company’s precise annual revenue percentages paid out to the music industry in 2025. Last year’s $10 billion payout represented approximately 60% of its €15.67 billion ($16.96 billion) annual revenues. It therefore seems likely that Spotify has paid nearly 70% this year. This coincides with the company achieving its first full year of operating profit in 2024, totalling €1.4 billion ($1.495 billion) of Operating Income.