The UK’s share of the global music market may be shrinking as music globalizes in the age of streaming, but that doesn’t mean UK artists themselves are any worse off.
That’s one takeaway from Spotify’s latest release of data on the platform’s streaming numbers.
Spotify reported that royalties generated by UK artists reached £810 million in 2024.
That translates to USD $1.03 billion at the average exchange rate for 2024, and it’s 8% higher than the £750 million that Spotify reported for UK artists a year earlier.
Spotify says the total royalty haul from UK artists has more than doubled since 2018.
That suggests royalties generated by UK artists on Spotify are growing faster than the country’s overall recorded music market — and faster, even, than overall streaming revenues.
According to recorded music trade body BPI, wholesale recorded music revenues grew 4.8% YoY in 2024, to £1.49 billion ($1.9 billion), while wholesale revenues from streaming revenues grew 5.7% YoY.
Notably, over three-quarters of all royalties generated by UK artists on Spotify in 2024 were from listeners outside of the UK.
Spotify reported a 28% YoY increase in streams of UK artists from outside the country in 2024, and noted that streams of UK artists from abroad have grown more than 1,000% in the past decade. However, that isn’t to suggest that the overall popularity of UK artists has grown by that much: There are far more Spotify users today than a decade ago.
There were a total of 271 billion streams of UK artists on Spotify’s platform globally in 2024.
Nonetheless, the data shows that the UK – long a major exporter of music globally – continues to enjoy a prominent status in the global music scene, even if its overall market share is shrinking.
In a report released last fall, BPI estimated that UK artists accounted for 10% of global music streams in 2023, down from 17% in 2015.
Yet Spotify’s report suggests that UK artists are seeing their incomes grow – at least from streaming. The number of artists who earned more than £1 million ($1.28 million) increased by 20% in 2024, Spotify said, though it didn’t provide the actual number of artists earning above that threshold.
Spotify also noted that the number of UK artists who reached the thresholds of £10,000, £50,000 and £100,000 in earnings has doubled since 2018 – though, again, it didn’t provide the actual numbers of artists earnings at these thresholds.
The streaming platform noted that the UK’s domestic music market is also globalizing, with some international genres seeing massive increases in consumption in 2024, including sexy drill (up 1,460%), reggaeton Chileno (up 446%), Seresta (up 312%), and Lagu Timur (up 300%).
The platform also noted that the UK’s women artists “have increasingly found success on Spotify,” with a 52% increase in streams inside the UK and an 82% increase in streams outside the UK over the past five years.
Spotify’s numbers are the latest addition to its annual Loud & Clear report, which offers a rundown of streaming and royalty payout statistics on the platform.
The keynote part of the report, released earlier this year, reported that Spotify paid out some $10 billion in royalties in 2024, up around 11% from the year before and enough for Spotify to declare itself the world’s largest digital music retailer.Music Business Worldwide
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