Spotify pays €34 million in royalties to Belgian music industry

Belgian music rights holders received €34 million in royalties via Spotify last year, an increase of 11% compared to 2023, according to the music streaming platform’s Loud & Clear report.

The amount does not go entirely to the artists: Spotify pays part of its music-related revenue to rights holders and labels, who then pay artists and songwriters based on their individual contracts.

The Swedish streaming giant announced at the beginning of the year that it had paid a record $10 billion (€9.18 billion) in royalties to the music industry in 2024.

Spotify has been heavily criticised since its 2008 debut over its artist compensation, with some major artists such as Taylor Swift and Thom Yorke temporarily withdrawing their music from the service in protest.

Instead of paying artists a fixed price per song or album sold, Spotify pays royalties to rights holders based on the artist’s market share, or number of streams for their songs as a proportion of total songs streamed.

Spotify Wrapped 2024 highlighted the popularity of Belgian artists on the international scene: Lost Frequencies, Damso, Stromae and Angèle, for example, are enjoying enormous success beyond Belgium.

In total, listeners around the world spent around 1.7 million hours a day listening to Belgian artists via streaming in 2024, according to Spotify data.

More than 410 million user-created playlists included Belgian artists. Most of these were created by listeners in the US, followed by France, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands.