IMARA SPECIAL REPORT
Beyond Spotify’s Loud & Clear 2025: The Real Economics of Streaming for Performers
Introduction
Spotify’s 2025 Loud & Clear report is celebrated as a transparency initiative designed to highlight the platform’s positive economic impact on artists, repertoire diversity, and global cultural exchange. However, a closer examination reveals that the report selectively frames data and omits critical economic realities that directly affect performers, and especially session musicians and non-featured artists, who continue to receive 0% of streaming revenues.
This paper offers IMARA’s analytical response to Spotify’s messaging, demonstrating how some of the platform’s claims do not align with the economic structure of the streaming market or with real-world performer outcomes. It examines several of the report’s central claims in turn.
Loud and unclear: assessing Spotify’s claims
Growth in Diversity - A Misleading Metric
Spotify highlights that songs in 16 languages reached the Global Top 50 in 2025, twice as many as five years ago. However, this metric reflects consumption trends. While diversity statistics are valuable in themselves, here they are presented without addressing the structural inequalities in payment that persist across the system. Crucially, remuneration patterns and outcomes are largely absent from the report.
The growth of multilingual charting reflects listener behaviour, not improved revenue distribution or fairness for performers.
Increased catalogue diversity does not alter the fact that 88.5% of all tracks on Spotify fall below the 1,000-stream threshold introduced under Spotify’s monetisation policy.
Session musicians on these tracks still receive no streaming income, regardless of language or popularity.
50% of royalties go to independent artists/labels - An Incomplete Picture
Spotify asserts that around half of the royalties paid now go to independent artists and labels. However:
This figure reflects royalties allocated to rightsholders, not royalties received by performers. Rightsholders are not the same group as musicians and session musicians.
Independent artists often rely on digital distributors or label-services arrangements, which may involve commissions or fees before royalties reach creators. In addition, some distributors commonly used by independent artists are themselves owned by major music companies, which further complicates the picture.
Independence does not in itself eliminate contractual opacity: several independent and self-releasing artists engage session musicians under one-off buyouts, perpetuating the same systemic exclusion found under label-based models.
The appearance of democratisation does not address the core structural issue: performers have no statutory right to streaming revenue.
13,800 artists generate over $100,000 annually — But revenue is not the same as income
Spotify’s headline claim that 13,800 artists generated at least $100,000 in 2025 is misleading for several reasons:
These figures reflect gross royalties, not what musicians ultimately receive.
Distributors and labels extract significant portions through commissions, contractual recoupment, and cross-collateralisation.
For performers on those same recordings, featured artists may receive only a limited share, while session musicians receive nothing.
Where is the actual cost breakdown?
Spotify identifies $11 billion paid to the music industry but fails to disclose:
How much of this figure relates to musical work rights as opposed to sound recording rights;
How much relates to podcasts or audiobooks?
How much is obscured by contractual arrangements such as minimum guarantees or breakage?
The Actual Economics of Streaming
Spotify is right on one point: streaming has become the dominant mode of global music consumption. With 69% of global music revenue coming from streaming and over 818 million paid subscription accounts worldwide, the model is now fully entrenched. However, that success rests on performances that remain undervalued and, in many cases, excluded from streaming income. The reality for many musicians and session musicians remains stark.
Over 60% work under verbal agreements.
43.5% have never signed a written session contract.
Only 28.7% believe their fees reflect their contribution.
A majority lack clarity about the contracts they sign.
Crucially, session musicians receive no streaming royalties at all, even when tracks reach millions or billions of plays. Their income does not scale with commercial success; it is typically limited to a one-time fee. At the heart of the problem is the absence of a statutory right to remuneration for the making available of recordings. As a result, streaming income on the master side is channelled to the principal rightsholders, labels and distributors, rather than being shared fairly with performers. This produces a deeply unequal structure in which:
52–55% of streaming revenue goes to labels and distributors.
30–35% to DSPs.
13–15% to authors and publishers.
0% guaranteed to performers.
0% guaranteed to session musicians.
Put simply, for 1 dollar of streaming revenue:
$0.52–0.55 go to labels and distributors
$0.30–0.35 to streaming platforms
$0.13–0.15 goes to authors and publishers
$0.00 goes to Performers (Featured Artists guaranteed share)
$0.00 goes to Session Musicians (Non-Featured Performers)
Featured artists may receive contractual royalties, though these are often highly uneven, but non-featured performers receive nothing, regardless of success. This diverges from long-established principles of fairness in copyright law, where performers share revenue from broadcasting, communication to the public, and other ancillary uses.
What is not so “loud and clear”
a. The pro rata model reinforces inequality: Spotify distributes revenue by market share, not individual user behaviour. This structurally favours:
Major labels
High-volume catalogue
English-language mainstream repertoire
The platform’s emphasis on a relatively small number of successful artists risks obscuring the broader reality that most performers, especially those working on independent projects, see no uplift in remuneration.
b. Minimum guarantees distort the ecosystem
Spotify does not disclose which “top 80+ artists” generating $10m+ annually are linked to factors such as:
Major label leverage
Multi-year licensing deals
Guaranteed minimum payouts
These arrangements can disproportionately favour a small number of market participants while doing little to improve income for the wider community of performers.
Why Equitable Remuneration Is the Necessary Solution
Spotify’s Loud & Clear 2025 report provides data without context, statistics without transparency, and celebratory narratives without economic truth. The platform’s selective disclosures obscure the central fact of the streaming economy:
Musicians, especially session musicians, and performers remain structurally excluded from the revenue generated by streaming.
Such market failure can only be addressed by decisive policy interventions. Putting in place a statutory, non-waivable equitable remuneration right for streaming would:
Guarantee that performers, including session musicians, receive a fair income independent of contractual terms.
Ensure transparency and eliminate information asymmetries.
Prevent buyouts and exploitation in work-for-hire practices.
Align digital music use with the principles already recognised in broadcasting and public performance.
Protect and promote cultural diversity as user-centric or hybrid models evolve.
This right must be administered collectively and paid directly to performers, ensuring it cannot be absorbed by recoupment or offset against advances. The economic evidence solidly supports this approach. Even relatively small percentage allocations would create meaningful and sustainable income streams for performers without destabilising the streaming industry.
Conclusion
Spotify’s 2025 Loud & Clear report does not address the core issue: performers, especially session musicians, remain entirely excluded from streaming revenues. By presenting selective data without adequate economic context, the report risks obscuring the structural imbalance that allows platforms, labels, and distributors to capture the overwhelming share of value while many performers, especially session musicians and non-featured performers, receive nothing.
A statutory, non-waivable equitable remuneration right is therefore essential to address this market failure and ensure fair, transparent income for all performers. Implemented through collective management and protected from recoupment, such a right would finally align streaming with long-established principles of fairness in music remuneration.