The Canadian punk rock band Belvedere has long relied on touring as a primary source of income.
While the group’s music is available on Spotify, merchandise and ticket sales generate most of Belvedere’s revenue.
“Due to how long the band has been around and still operates, for a punk band that was never meant to play a show, our yearly royalties are still pitiful,” said Jay Sinclair, a former member of Belvedere. “But seemingly better than some other artists I’ve spoken to.”
So, are artists being paid fairly and adequately for their contribution to the streaming service?
The claim
Spotify insists it pays artists fairly.
“We believed that a blended option or freemium model would build scale and monetization together, ultimately creating a new music economy that gives fans access to the music they love and pays artists fairly for their amazing work,” Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said back in 2014.
The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) says Spotify needs to fairly compensate artists, especially independent and smaller artists who struggle to make a living.
However, a survey of European artists found that more than 69 per cent were “somewhat dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with their earnings from streaming services.
Spotify pays royalties based on an artist’s “market share.”
So, how much an artist makes depends on how many streams their songs receive compared to the total streams across the music platform.
Spotify paid out artists $15 Billion CAD in 2025, an increase of $1 billion from the previous year, which shows growth for the business.
Spotify uses the pro rata method to calculate artist earnings, accounting for the total market of streams and paying artists proportionally based on the number of streams they contributed.
Spotify has become the world’s most subscribed to music streaming platform, “with 751 million users, including 290 million subscribers, in 184 markets.”
This year, the company is estimated to be worth $119 billion CAD.
“Spotify paid us 0.29 GBP (0.005402 CAD) per stream, so we exposed its unfair model,” Gareth David of the U.K. indie rock band Los Campesinos! told The Times.
For reference, the average payout for an artist who reaches 1 million streams is roughly $3,000 to $5,000 CAD.
About 70 per cent of Spotify’s earnings are allocated to payouts for shareholders and artists, the remaining 30 per cent goes directly back into the company.
Are artists actually making a living?
A 2025 analysis estimated that only 0.1 per cent of nine million artists on Spotify actually make a full-time living from the streaming service.
For signed artists, payments are routed through record labels, which take a share of earnings under contractual agreements.
“Depending on what kind of contract you have negotiated with the label and what the mechanical breakdown is of your intellectual property, the bottom line of your streaming royalties and revenue can be cut down greatly,” said Sinclair.
“For example, if you have a 360 degree contract where the label has a vested interest in all aspects of your brand, being your merch, your management, your studio and creative work, booking and marketing, the percentage that they may take from that bottom line can be quite large and surprising if the artist is not aware,” he said.
Is Spotify paying artists fairly?
Many musicians continue to grumble about Spotify not paying them fairly.
Undoubtedly, some artists benefit financially from Spotify, but the majority earn far less, raising questions about fairness.
But as with live music, it’s a few megastars that suck up most of the money.
Last year, the head of Spotify clapped back at the streaming service’s critics.
In a X (formerly Twitter) post, Ek said Spotify pays out roughly two-thirds of every dollar generated from music back to rights holders, appearing to blame record companies for not passing that on to artists.
“So, it’s always unfortunate and frankly disappointing to hear stories where the majority of those payments don’t make it through to an artist or songwriter,” wrote Ek.
The Spotify CEO added his company helps independent musicians, adding “50% of the $10B we paid out was generated by DIY artists and artists signed to independent record labels. Especially from a historic standpoint, that is insane and was NOT happening in the pre-streaming era.”
The Calgary Journal asked Spotify to comment on this fact-checking report, but didn’t hear back.