Practically 80% of artists on Spotify have fewer than 50 month-to-month listeners

MBW’s Stat Of The Week is a sequence through which we spotlight a single knowledge level that deserves the eye of the worldwide music trade. Stat Of the Week is supported by Cinq Music Group, a technology-driven document label, distribution, and rights administration firm.

There’s an ocean of music on Spotify that could be a very good distance from being fashionable.

Final month, MBW dug round on Spotify’s newly-updated Loud & Clear website to establish how most of the 8 million artists on SPOT had launched fewer than 10 tracks of their lifetime on the platform.

The reply? Over two-thirds, or 67%.

This bought us considering: if Spotify is awash with artists who’ve occasionally launched music… then what number of artists on Spotify have launched music that’s being occasionally listened to?

Again we went, notepad in hand, to Spotify’s Loud & Clear website.

Spotify created Loud & Clear to supply clear numbers to artists relating to their very own careers. It incorporates a very useful ‘reputation calculator’.

This nifty widget (see beneath) reveals one thing very helpful: what number of tracks and/or artists on Spotify have surpassed sure ranges of lifetime streams and/or month-to-month listeners.

Loud & Clear’s ‘reputation calculator’ (our descriptor)

Into this ‘reputation calculator’, we plonked a easy inquiry: the variety of artists on Spotify with greater than X month-to-month listeners, the place X month-to-month listeners is the minimal quantity the Loud & Clear website would allow.

That minimal quantity was 35 (the ‘reputation calculator’ gained’t settle for something smaller). So we ran that – in addition to 50, 100, and 1,000.

The outcomes have been… actually one thing.

As you’ll be able to see beneath, simply 1.73 million artists on Spotify at present have greater than 50 month-to-month listeners.

As beforehand famous (once more, due to the up to date Loud & Clear website), there are round 8 million artists with music on Spotify in whole right this moment.

So it’s a easy mathematical maneuver to conclude that simply 21.6% of artists on Spotify right this moment – round 1.7 million of them – have a month-to-month viewers on the platform higher than 50 individuals.

Or, yup, to place it one other means: Practically 80% (78.4%) of artists on Spotify right this moment – round 6.3 million of them – have a month-to-month viewers on the platform smaller than 50 individuals.

That’s quite a lot of hobbyists.

It is a slightly enlightening set of statistics, for a few causes.

For one factor, it brings but extra perspective to the controversy across the streaming financial system – particularly the teeny proportion (0.2%) of the 8 million artists on Spotify who’re producing $50k-plus a yr from the platform.

As well as, it makes you marvel how a lot cash loss-making Spotify have to be burning every year merely to host oodles of music/artists {that a} handful of individuals – at greatest – are literally listening to.

(A clue: In Spotify’s 2021 annual report, it famous that it noticed “an [annual] enhance in data know-how prices of EUR €33 million as a consequence of enhance[s] in our utilization of cloud computing companies and extra software program license charges”.)

Sadly, Spotify’s Loud & Clear gained’t allow us to dig any deeper on the month-to-month listeners query, to find, for instance, what number of artists on SPOT have flat-out-zero listeners every month.

Nevertheless, one factor the positioning does enable us to do is to run comparable numbers to the above, however when it comes to music tracks on Spotify, and what number of lifetime streams they’ve amassed.

Earlier than we get into these numbers, it’s price figuring out this: In response to Spotify’s annual report for 2021, there have been “over 82 million” tracks in SPOT’s catalog on the shut of final yr.

The identical annual report notes, nevertheless, that this quantity included “greater than 3.6 million podcast titles”.

From that, we are able to estimate that – on the shut of 2021, no less than – there have been roughly 78.4 million music tracks on Spotify.

Now let’s have a look at the play-count numbers.

The bottom determine Loud & Clear will enable us to punch into this a part of its ‘reputation calculator’ is 101 – i.e. we are able to uncover what number of music tracks inside the approximate 78.4 million accessible on Spotify have greater than 101 performs.

This quantity comes out at 60.86 million.

(Notice: With regards to play-counts, Loud & Clear’s figures are based mostly on end-of-2021 knowledge, and solely relate to music content material.)

Which means almost 1 / 4 of tracks on Spotify right this moment – roughly 22.4%, or 17.5 million of them – have been performed fewer than 101 instances since Spotify launched in 2008.

Issues get actually attention-grabbing, although, once we transfer up our play-count threshold quantity (see above).

For instance: In response to Loud & Clear, some 38.69 million tracks on Spotify have been performed greater than 500 instances thus far.

Which means greater than half (51%) of the 78.4 million music tracks on Spotify have been performed fewer than 500 instances.

And what of tracks which were performed fewer than 1,000 instances thus far? What proportion of Spotify’s music catalog do these tracks comprise?

Some 60.8%.

Final one: At least 79.1% of music tracks on Spotify – almost 4 in each 5 – have been performed fewer than 5,000 instances.

Oscar Wilde is famously credited with having written: “Recognition is the one insult I’ve by no means suffered.”

Spotify’s knowledge suggests that almost all of artists who’ve ever uploaded tracks to its platform – the overwhelming majority, in actual fact – stay equally fortuitous.