Spotify claims its highest-ever revenue number for indie musicians & non-English songs

Spotify has just recently announced its annual music economic reports amidst an ongoing battle with Apple over its app store ecosystem, which the streaming platform claims that it’s ripping off the business.

The announcement states that indie musicians had a fantastic year, earning their highest-ever total of nearly $4.5 billion. This marks the highest earnings ever from a single retailer in a year and represents a four-fold increase since 2017.

Spotify, saying that it’s paid out at least $48 billion since its launch, achieved its highest payouts yet, surpassing $9 billion. The number of artists earning at least $1 million, $100,000, and $10,000 has also nearly tripled since 2017. 

“Careers don’t just begin on Spotify, they grow on Spotify,” says the platform on Tuesday, which has been thrown under the bus for quite some time over allegations of “unfair” payouts for artists.

Surprisingly, 80% of these “millionaire” artists are not even widely recognized and have not appeared on Spotify’s Top 50 Daily Global Songs chart.

The report shows that more than half of the artists making over $10,000 on Spotify are from non-English speaking countries. World music is becoming more popular, especially with young listeners in the US. Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, and Korean are the top languages, with Hindi, Indonesian, Punjabi, Tamil, and Greek also gaining traction in 2023.