Spotify paid a record $11 billion to the music industry in 2025, up roughly $1 billion year over year, and IFPI reports paid subscription revenue grew 8.8% in 2025. Yet per-stream economics stay flat because streaming pays from a pro-rata pool: more revenue also means more subscribers and more streams splitting it.
Spotify announced its US increase on January 15, 2026, effective from February. Beyond the individual plan, Duo went from $16.99 to $18.99, Family from $19.99 to $21.99, and Student from $5.99 to $6.99, per C
For independent artists, streaming royalties can vary dramatically depending on where their listeners are located, which subscription plans they use, and which streaming platform generates the plays.
The short answer is that platforms such as TIDAL, Apple Music and Amazon Music often generate higher effective revenue per stream than Spotify, while Spotify remains extremely important because of its enormous audience and overall royalty pool.
Spotify, for example, distributes royalties based primarily on an artist’s share of total streams in each market rather than paying a predetermined rate for every play. Spotify says roughly two-thirds of music revenue is paid back to music rights holders.
Based on commonly reported artist earnings and recent real-world royalty data, the effective payout hierarchy often looks roughly like this: Recent royalty data shared by artists illustrates just how different effective rates can be. For example, Los Campesinos!
Reported substantially higher effective earnings per play from TIDAL, Amazon Music and Apple Music than from Spotify for one album, although those figures represent one catalog and should not be interpreted as universal rates.
Artists commonly report higher effective earnings per stream on TIDAL compared with Spotify, although TIDAL does not guarantee one universal rate. An artist may earn more from 1,000 TIDAL streams than 1,000 S
Streaming price increases in 2026 hit Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music and TIDAL, but every rise landed in the US, UK, eurozone and Australia. Subscriber growth is coming from Latin America, MENA, Africa and Asia. Here is what that split does to per-stream revenue for an indie catalogue.