Loud(er) & Clear(er)
Our annual breakdown, reading between the lines of Spotify's Loud & Clear report
Spotify’s annual Loud & Clear report is a masterclass in cherry picked stats and mythmaking.
“Streaming’s Rising Tide” goes the headline this year. “The system we’ve built together is working.”
Ok, working for who?
Here’s my now-annual breakdown of Spotify Payouts by Tier, According to Spotify, along with some top-level takeaways and what artists/labels/catalogs can do to improve their situation in a system that, intentionally or not, seems to be hurting all but the already well off.
Year over year insights
The rich are getting richer
Artists generating $1m+ in revenue from Spotify are again gaining in streamshare at the direct expense of those below the $1m+ line.
Artist income growth is slowing
The $ Per Artist Growth Rate (vs. 2022-2023) took an absolutely nosedive for eight out of the ten tiers. This feels like the clearest indication of the "more money overall, but smaller slices per artist" phenomenon.
Upward mobility is getting harder
Last year, all but the bottom two tiers saw double digit increases in Artists Per Tier. This year, only $1m+ tiers have double digit increases. Again, Spotify is doing great at creating more millionaires, but not doing a good job of creating more working class folks.
Dive into the full spreadsheet here.
So what can artists/labels/catalogs do?
DIVERSIFY YOUR CATALOG INCOME SOURCES.
Spotify/streaming is not the entire music industry. Downloads, physical sales, merch, publishing, neighboring rights - these things are all within reach of every single artist/label/catalog, and they do add up. Imho the answer is not to make more content; it's to diversify and maximize how you monetize, and point folks away from platforms that aren't helping you.
We literally built Infinite Catalog to be royalty agnostic to make keeping track of all this monetization easier. We want to help build a world where artists/labels/catalogs can bet on themselves and their fans, rather than praying for the grace and favor of the algorithm.
Controlling your own financial destiny is not as hard as it used to be, and stepping back from a platform that is making your life/career harder, intentionally or otherwise, is, imho, a step in the right direction.
-Hunter