Spotify says Canadian artists generated $460 million in 2024

In a new report filled with interesting stats, Spotify shared how much money Canadian artists made on the platform and where the money comes from.

What shocked me when looking at the report was that 92 percent of the income Canadian artists make from Spotify comes from listeners outside of Canada. That’s around 15 million hours of Canadian music streamed each day.

The most popular songs that qualify as Canadian on Spotify are;

1. One Of The Girls – The Weeknd, Lily-Rose Depp, JENNIE
2. Greedy – Tate McRae
3. StarBoy – Daft Punk, The Weeknd
4. Blinding Lights – The Weeknd
5. Popular – Madonna, Playboi Carti, The Weeknd

The report says that on the backs of these artists (cough cough, The Weeknd), Canada is the third largest music exporter in the world.

While there is little to break down how this money is split up, the streaming network has paid out $460 million in royalty payments to Canadian artists throughout 2024. Spotify says that the number of artists making 50K on the app has doubled since 2017, but it’s not clear how many people that really includes. In 2024, Spotify paid out $435 million to Canadians.

Another interesting fact is that roughly 40 per cent of royalties generated were for independent artists or labels, which means around $186 million of that $460 million didn’t go to the big record labels and the artists they represent.