Spotify declared on Wednesday that it had paid a record high of $10 billion in royalties to the music industry in 2024, the biggest payment by the streaming giant in one year.

Royalties are payments made to artists, songwriters, and music companies when their music is played or streamed on platforms like Spotify. It's like a reward for creating music — every time someone listens to a song, the artist gets a small amount of money as a royalty.

Spotify says about 1,500 artists earned more than $1 million each from royalties during the previous year, indicating increasing economic gains for artists on the platform.

Spotify's royalty payments have climbed dramatically in the past decade. In 2014, Spotify paid out approximately $1 billion in royalties — that's ten times more than its annual payments every year since then. 

Although the enormous payments, Spotify got involved in legal issues last year when it was sued in America for paying too little in royalties on tens of millions of tracks. However, a federal court in New York threw out the lawsuit this spring, acquitting the firm of any criminal behavior.

Spotify's record payments show the site's mounting influence on the music business and the rising fiscal potential for musicians via streaming.

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