Spotify released figures on Tuesday on how artists generate money on its music streaming service.
Between 4 million and 5 million listeners per month, or between 20 million and 25 million monthly streams, will generate around $1 million for musicians, the music streaming market leader said.
Last year, more than 1,250 artists managed to break the $1 million mark, well up on the 1,060 who did so in 2022.
A remarkable fact was that more than 1,000 of the 1,250 did not have a Top 50 hit on the services global rankings. "Many of the artists who generated at least $1 million on Spotify in 2023 aren't household names and didn't need a hit song to have a big year," it said.
Spotify and the music industry note that the transition from compact disks to streaming has meant that musicians get clicks over a longer period. "The overwhelming majority of artists on Spotify wouldn’t have had music on the shelf in the CD era," it said.
Spotify's payments to the music sector exceeded $9 billion last year. Around two thirds of its takings are paid out to music companies and artists in accordance with its licensing agreements.
It works on the assumption that there are around 225,000 professional and emerging artists and bands on its service.
Spotify estimates that musicians' total takings are around four times higher than what they receive from the service.
More than 10 million uploaders had at least a single track on Spotify, but around 5 million of them had fewer than 100 streams across their entire range.
Spotify decided last that that songs with fewer than 1,000 streams per year do not receive payouts. This change affects tens of millions of tracks that would be due on average less than three cents per month.
In the last quarter, the service had 602 million users, of whom 236 million were paying subscribers.
