In early 2024, Spotify announced a new policy: Tracks that failed to attract more than 1,000 plays in a 12-month period would be excluded from the service’s royalty payouts.
This was a move towards what Universal Music Group has branded “artist-centric” royalty payout models – i.e. rewarding artists with significant audiences at the expense of artists with only a handful of listeners.
Important context, then, for the following figures, taken from Luminate‘s annual year-end industry report.
According to Luminate’s data, there were 184 million separate ISRCs (i.e. music uploads) on audio streaming services in 2023.
Of that 184 million, some 158.6 million each received 1,000 or fewer plays on audio streaming services in 2023.
To put that another way, some 86.2% of those 184 million tracks measured by Luminate didn’t hit 1,000 plays.
MBW’s original report on this data is here, and you can see the key data visualization below.
