• Music streaming platform Spotify has shared some general South African artist revenue figures for 2022.
• Spotify says revenue is three times what it was four years ago.
• It also said that a quarter of all South African artists who generated more than R100k self-distribute their music on the platform.

Artist revenue continues to be a divisive topic for music streaming platform Spotify ever since it first launched in South Africa in early 2018.

While the margins are still fine, especially for up-and-coming artists that may not feature on one of Spotify’s curated radars or playlists, the local arm of the company has shared some interesting insights when it comes to revenue.

To that end, Spotify South Africa shared some figures relating to artist revenue for 2022, and in general, it makes for positive reading.

Here the company says artists generated nearly R200 million in revenue for 2022, with Spotify sadly not offering more precise numbers. It did, however, note that this R200 million is up significantly from four years ago, three times as much in fact.

One of the contributing factors to this increase has been the discovery of the amapiano genre across the world, with the Jerusalema song in particular aiding in this regard.

“The homegrown South African genre, has seen tremendous growth, with over 1.9 billion streams in 2022 alone. The genre has grown beyond its home borders, with streams outside of Sub Saharan Africa growing by more than 563% on Spotify in the last two years. The UK, USA, Netherlands, Germany and Canada are a few of the countries outside Sub Saharan Africa, listening to Amapiano,” Spotify explained in a press release sent to Hypertext.

2022 was a particularly strong year for local artists, the platform added, with the number of South African artists who generated more than R50k to R500k in royalties from Spotify alone increasing by over 30 percent in the last year.

Also interesting is the fact that a quarter of all South African artists who generated more than R100k self-distribute their music on Spotify, using distributors like DistroKid, TuneCore, CD Baby, and others. 

Offering up more insight into how artist revenue is generated on its platform, Spotify noted that there are two mechanisms – subscription fees from Premium listeners and fees from advertisers on music on the Free tier.

“Nearly 70% of that revenue is paid back as royalties to rights holders, who then pay the artists and songwriters, based on the agreed terms. These rights holders include record labels, publishers, independent distributors, performance rights organisations and collecting societies,” said Spotify.

While there will no doubt be more questions from emerging artists as to what cut they receive, and whether Spotify is the best platform to use when trying to earn money from their music, it is at least pleasing to see more locally-relevant statistics being shared.

“By releasing the revenues that South African artists generated on our platform in 2022, we are not only keeping ourselves accountable, but also showing artists that it does pay to put your art out into the world,” highlighted Jocelyne Muhutu-Remy, Spotify’s MD for Sub-Saharan Africa.

[Image – Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash