he world’s most popular audio and music streaming giant has announced its annual contri-bution to global music revenue, showcasing how its impact has quad-rupled in a decade.

According to a press statement released by Spotify late last month, in 2014 — when global music revenue hit its lowest recorded figure, 13 billion dollars – the platform’s contribution stood at around 1 billion dollars. In just a decade – from 2014 to 2024 – the streaming giant has paid out billions. In 2024 alone, Spotify paid artists to the amount of 10 billion dollars, “totaling nearly $60 billion since their founding.”

In terms of numbers, Spotify is ahead of everyone else in the business because, though there are several music streaming platforms, Spotify has attracted listeners by monetizing unlikely markets such as India, Brazil, Mexico, and Nigeria.

“In the pre-streaming era, you were either in the club or not. If you didn’t have a label deal or the means to distribute your music worldwide, you weren’t one of the few thousand artists on shelves at a record store or one of the 40 in rotation on a radio station. Now, you can record something today and have it on Spotify tomorrow. Even better, payments to the music industry have shifted from a concentrated few at the top to an increasingly diverse and growing ecosystem of artists finding success,” said David Kaefer, VP of Music Business at Spotify.

Why does Spotify’s global growth and music revenue matter? Because we hope this milestone has a trickle-down effect and leads to fair payment for dozens of Pakistani artists, many of whom struggle to earn a sustainable income.

The absence of income from sales of music in the form of cassettes, CDs is one reason. An even bigger reason is the absence of income from regular paying shows across the country, as well as international tours — apart from estab-lished stars like Atif Aslam and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan — means that many artists outside the top-tier struggle to secure shows, which remains the main source of income for musicians in the modern age.

In Pakistan, this means that artists hope to appear on heavily advertised, corporate-funded shows like Coke Stu-dio and Velo Sound Station (the latter with a third season officially underway) to further their names on a national and international level. However, these plat-forms can only make room for a handful of names.

Some key examples include Ali Sethi, who found international recognition after his Coke Studio song ‘Pasoori’, featuring Shae Gill, became a massive hit both locally and internationally.

Ergo, many Pakistani artists depend on platforms like Spotify to pay them justly, especially emerging names.