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According to Spotify, Taylor Swift is one of the most streamed musicians of 2021
Photo: Isabel Infantes / dpa
Spotify paid out around $7 billion to music rights holders last year — more than ever before.
As the audio streaming service reported, more than 1,000 artists received more than one million euros in revenue for the first time.
But even that is still a very small elite among the musicians: there are a total of around eight million of them in the database.
Over 50,000 artists made more than $10,000 on Spotify last year, according to the report.
This number has doubled since 2017, reports the Swedish company.
Spotify is the market leader in music streaming;
Most recently, according to the current quarterly overview, the number of paying subscribers was around 180 million.
However, artists have been complaining for years that the streaming service does not pay them appropriately for accessing their songs.
The company did not disclose how much money individual musicians received in 2021.
According to Spotify, the most streamed in the past year included Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift, BTS, Drake and Justin Bieber.
The song »Drivers License« by Olivia Rodrigo received the most calls.
130 artists received more than five million dollars each.
That number has increased by 160 percent over the past five years, according to the report.
In recent years, several artists have boycotted the service, including pop singer Taylor Swift and the punk band Die Ärzte.
They later made their albums available again on Spotify.
Others try to emancipate themselves from streaming providers with their own payment models, such as Kanye West: If you want to hear his new album, you have to buy his »Stem Player«.
Last year, Spotify set up a website called "Loud and Clear" with the aim of creating "more transparency" about the payment of participating artists.
According to the report, in 2021 the music industry's streaming revenue will surpass all the industry's revenue from music sales.
Artists are paid on Spotify according to their share of the total number of streams accessed.
The payments from the streaming provider go to the rights holders of the individual pieces of music - for example labels, publishers and distributors.
How much actually ends up with the artists depends on their contracts.
Recently, Spotify has focused more and more on podcast content;
strategically, the company wants to position itself as an audio content provider, with music as one offering among many.
Various musicians criticize this.
But Spotify was also recently criticized in the podcast field: after the podcaster Joe Rogan, with whom Spotify has an exclusive contract, was accused of spreading false information on the subject of Corona, music stars such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell had their songs from the Remove Spotify offer.
Spotify recently caused a stir in the world of sports: FC Barcelona announced that it would advertise Spotify in the coming season – among other things, the stadium in Barcelona will be called "Spotify Camp Nou".
Previously, Spotify boss Daniel Ek had tried in vain to buy London's Arsenal FC.
Instead, Ek invested in a Munich start-up company that develops AI software to help the military with enemy reconnaissance and combat conduct.
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