Disc Makers Blog

Why does Spotify pay the lowest streaming royalties?

By Tony van Veen

Thu Jun 19th, 2025 17:07:06

By Disc Makers' Author Tony van Veen

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

If you follow the music business on socials, you may have seen charts claiming that Spotify pays rightsholders less per stream than other platforms do. But is that actually the case? Today, I’m going to do the math to figure out if it is, and if so, why that is, and what you can do about it.
Let’s start with some facts. Spotify is by far the biggest streaming platform active in the United States. Globally, they have a staggering 675 million monthly active users, including 263 million paying premium subscribers. Apple Music, the number two service in the U.S., has a...

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