The refreshed Loud & Clear website drills down into payouts generated by artists on Spotify. This is $10.63bn at current exchange rates, which means the company is paying out 65.9% of its revenues to music rightsholders. The $7bn figure is also useful to cross-reference against Spotify’s financial results for 2021, when its revenues were €9.67bn. That’s $4.2bn, with the rest of the $7bn made up of payments to independent labels and (via distributors) to self-releasing artists, as well as to publishing rightsholders. Spotify also estimates that its payments accounted for around a third of the $12.5bn streaming revenues earned by the three major labels in 2021. “It’s more than any other retailer paid last year, and we did a bunch of research and analysis to confirm that it’s the biggest cheque that any retailer has written to the industry in the history of recorded music,” Spotify’s VP, global head of music product, Charlie Hellman told Music Ally in an interview ahead of the website’s relaunch. The company has now paid out more than $30bn since its launch in 2008. Spotify is announcing today that it paid more than $7bn to music rightsholders in 2021, up from $5bn in 2020 and $3.3bn in 2017.

However, Spotify’s figures are also a useful snapshot of that streaming economy: something the company’s supporters and critics alike can get their teeth into as they prepare for the next round of debate about these issues. Yes, this is data storytelling with a clear corporate purpose: to back up Spotify’s argument that it has a positive impact on musicians and rightsholders alike, at a time when the rows over streaming economics and creator earnings is more heated than ever.

A year later, it is refreshing that site with new figures. Spotify launched its Loud & Clear website in March 2021, with the aim of “increasing transparency” around its payouts to the music industry.

Is spotify down march 8th