Spotify is a Swedish music-streaming firm. It listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2018. As of 2025 it is the only European firm founded this century to be worth more than $100bn.
Spotify has offered video podcasts since 2020. For the past couple of years, however, the most popular platform for podcasts in America has been YouTube rather than Spotify or Apple. Three in ten American listeners consume podcasts mainly in video form. Some 71% of American podcasters now film video alongside audio. Edison Research finds that those consuming podcasts mainly on Spotify listen for 48 more minutes per week than those mainly using YouTube.
In the past year Spotify removed 75m "spammy" tracks from its platform, saying that AI had made it easier to "push 'slop' into the ecosystem." In 2024 Spotify paid more than $10bn in royalties to rights-holders. Since 2017, following the upload of tens of millions of home-made tracks, the big record labels' share of listening on Spotify has fallen from 87% to 71%. Over the same period the number of artists making over $1,000 a year in Spotify royalties has tripled; the number making $5m has quadrupled and those making $10m has risen seven-fold.
We read to say that we have read.