Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on January 28, 2026
2 min readLast updated: January 28, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleSpotify paid over $11 billion to the music industry in 2025, marking the largest annual payout from a retailer. The company aims to grow by increasing subscription prices and expanding content formats.
Jan 28 (Reuters) - Spotify said on Wednesday it had paid out more than $11 billion to the music industry last year, adding that it was the largest annual payment to music from a retailer in history.
The Swedish streaming platform said in a blog post that its payouts in 2025 grew by more than 10% from a year earlier, with independent artists and labels accounting for half of all royalties.
The company has been prioritizing retaining and bringing in new artists to the platform as it faces stiff competition from other major players such as YouTube and Apple in the music-streaming market.
YouTube said in October it had paid out more than $8 billion to the music industry in the 12 months between July 2024 and June 2025.
"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," the blog said.
The company reinvests the money it keeps into the platform, it said, as it looks to grow various content formats such as podcasts, videos and audiobooks.
Spotify recently raised the prices for its premium subscription plans in several markets to boost profits and leverage its large user base to drive growth.
It had 713 million monthly active users at the end of the third quarter.
(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)
A music streaming service is a platform that allows users to listen to music online without downloading it. Services like Spotify provide access to vast libraries of songs for a subscription fee or free with ads.
Artist royalties are payments made to musicians and songwriters based on the sales and streams of their music. These payments are typically a percentage of the revenue generated by the music.
A subscription price increase refers to the rise in the cost of a subscription service, which can occur to adjust for inflation, improve service quality, or increase company profits.
A premium subscription plan is a paid service that offers additional features or benefits compared to a free version, such as ad-free listening, higher audio quality, and offline access to music.
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