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Spotify paid out $11bn to rights holders in 2025, up 10% from 2024; close to 14,000 artists generated at least $100k

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Spotify earned for another year the status of "highest-paying retailer globally" with over $11 billion distributed to rights owners in 2025, up by more than 10% year-over-year, according to the streaming services' latest Loud&Clear posting. Spotify accounts for about 30% of global recorded music revenue, up from less than 15% in 2017.

(Source: Spotify)

Since its launch in 2006, the Swedish platform has paid out nearly $70bn to rights holders. Spotify claims that these payouts "aren’t conc...

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Emmanuel is a Washington, DC-based freelance journalist, blogger and media consultant, specialising in the entertainment business and cultural trends. He was the US editor for British music industry trade publication Music Week. Previously, he was the editor of Impact, a magazine for the music publishing community (2007-2009), the global editor of US trade publication Billboard (2003-2006), and the editor in chief of Billboard’s sister publication Music & Media (1997-2003).

Creative Industries

Calendar — Week 10, 2026

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MARCH 2026

– March 22-25: MUSEXPO, known as “The United Nations of Music”, will return for its 26th global edition in Burbank, California. – March 2-25: Winter Music Conference (WMC) in Miami Beach, Florida, as part of Miami Music Week. APRIL 2026 – April 9-10: Tallinn Music Week in Estonia. - April 21: Assemblies of the Member States of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland. – April 22-24: IMS Ibiza 2026, presented in partner...

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Creative Industries

Key figures — Week 10, 2026

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$39.5 billion That's recorded music global revenues in 2025, up 9.4% compared to the previous year, according to MIDiA Research‘s “Recorded music market 2025 | Rise of the fan economy” yearly report. MIDiA’s founder Mark Mulligan said in a blogpost that the revenue category expanded rights, which includes labels’ participation in merch, live, brand, etc, outperformed the global market growth rate with a 21.5% increase year-over-year. IFPI will release its yearly rep...

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Creative Industries

Main stories — Week 10, 2026

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These are some of the main stories published by Creative Industries News in the past week: COPYRIGHT & REGULATION> European Parliament adopts AI report on the protection of copyrighted work and the EU’s creative sector in the age of AI> US Senators Marsha Blackburn and Peter Welch urge ByteDance to ‘shut down’ AI video tool Seedance 2.0> Catherine Pégard replaces Rachida Dati as Minister of Culture in French government> British Society of Authors launches the Human Authored scheme to help id...

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