Spotify's highest-streaming artists still have trouble generating significant income, says new report

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  • Music Business Worldwide founder Tim Ingham did a deep dive on Spotify's "Gold Club" for Rolling Stone.
  • Spotify's highest-streaming artists still have trouble generating significant income, says new report image
  • Less than 900 artists made over $1 million on Spotify in 2020, says a new report. The Rolling Stone column, written by Music Business Worldwide founder Tim Ingham, takes aim at the seemingly healthy "creator economy." His music-related analysis focuses on Spotify's recent Loud & Clear report, which aimed to explain payouts in a clear manner. That report identified a so-called "Gold Club"—the 57,000 artists representing the top 0.8 percent earners on the platform. The Spotify report breaks this down further—just 13,400 artists earned more than $50,000 in 2020. Of those 13,400, only 7,800 earned more than $100,000 on the platform, 1,820 earned over $500,000 and a paltry 870 artists topped $1 million.
    The 43,600 "Gold Club" artists earning less than $50,000 would split $1.5 billion. "If this figure was somehow spread equally amongst them," Ingham writes, "it would still only equate to $34,404 per artist per year." Read Tim Ingham's Rolling Stone column.
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