One of the questions sparked by Spotify’s refresh of its Loud & Clear website yesterday – our analysis of that is here – was over how much of the service’s $7bn payouts in 2021 were generated by new artists. Motive Unknown boss Darren Hemmings tweeted the question last night, so we went digging for relevant numbers on the site.
The most relevant stat is for the artist category that Spotify calls ‘Breakthrough’: artists who had fewer than 1m streams before 2020, but who are now in the top 50,000 artists on the platform. Spotify said that 21,600 artists fell into this category – just over 43% of the top 50,000 – and that the average recording and publishing royalties generated on Spotify by their music in 2021 was $90k each. That means around $1.94bn of royalties – 27.8% of Spotify’s total payouts.
This isn’t a ‘frontline vs catalogue’ stat, though: it’s new artists, not new music (or rather: it doesn’t include royalties for new music from established artists). Still, it’s a useful figure to have out in the wild.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools :: Wyng
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