Spotify’s latest Loud And Clear report shows the global music market is becoming markedly less English‑centric, even as the streaming giant records a new high in royalty payments — and faces renewed artist backlash over its CEO’s links to a defence tech firm. The company says songs in 16 different languages appeared in its Global Top 50 last year, more than double the number in 2020, while total royalties paid reached $11 billion, up from $10 billion in 2024.
The report underlines how non‑English music is breaking into mainstream playlists: Puerto Rican star Bad Bunny, who records exclusively in Spanish, was the world’s most‑streamed artist, and Catalan‑born Rosalía featured singing in 14 dialects on her recent album Lux. Spotify highlighted several fast‑growing genres — Brazilian Funk audiences rose 36%, K‑Pop grew 31% and Trap Latino increased 29% — and said each of those genres generated more than $100 million in royalties on its platform last year.
Spotify also provided a breakdown of who benefits from streaming revenue. Globally, the 80 top recording artists each make more than $10 million a year from Spotify alone, while roughly half of total royalties were generated by independent artists and labels. The company said more than 13,800 artists earned at least $100,000 last year and around 150 UK artists received over £1 million in payouts. In the UK specifically, Spotify paid £860 million in royalties — a 6% increase year‑on‑year — and said more than 75% of those UK royalties were generated by listening outside the country.
Despite the growing linguistic diversity on the platform, English continues to dominate some official charts: the IFPI reports 14 of the Top 20 best‑selling albums last year were sung exclusively in English. Spotify noted, however, that listeners are exploring a wider range of music: its most‑played chart last week included artists from Puerto Rico (Bad Bunny, Rauw Alejandro), Indonesia (Nadhif Basalamah), South Africa (Tyla), Nigeria (Tems), Colombia (Ryan Castro), Mexico (Peso Pluma, Fuerza Regida) and South Korea (Blackpink, Jung Kook, Jin), among others.
The report arrives amid a fresh row over Spotify’s corporate ties. Several artists and bands — including Massive Attack, Deerhoof, King Lizard and Gizzard Wizard — have removed their music from the platform in protest at Daniel Ek’s recent appointment as chairman of Helsing, a German tech company that develops AI software for military applications such as the HX‑2 strike drone. Massive Attack said the decision reflects a “moral and ethical burden” of funding technologies they regard as lethal; Spotify has responded by stressing that it and Helsing are “totally separate companies.”
Spotify’s data and the company’s effort to publicise payouts come as part of an ongoing push to counter criticism that streaming underpays creators — per‑stream payouts on Spotify are generally in the range of £0.002 to £0.0035, and the company acknowledged that record labels, distributors, publishers and managers typically take a share of the money that reaches artists. Industry analyses dating back to 2017 have tracked the acceleration of global listening beyond Anglophone markets as streaming overtook physical formats as the music industry’s primary revenue source, a shift Spotify’s latest figures suggest is continuing to reshape which artists and languages reach global audiences.
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