Streaming economics for an independent project in 2026

Every planning conversation contains an implicit model of how streaming pays. It is worth replacing that with the actual figures, because the shape of the market decides which metrics matter.

The market is growing

IFPI reported global recorded music revenues of 31.7 billion dollars in 2025, up 6.4 percent, an eleventh consecutive year of growth. Paid subscription streaming accounted for 52.4 percent of that, and total streaming revenues passed 22 billion dollars, or 69.6 percent of the whole. Paid subscription accounts reached 837 million, up from 764 million the year before.

Growth was not evenly spread. Latin America grew 17.1 percent, the Middle East and North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa both 15.2 percent, and Asia 10.9 percent, which is relevant to anyone deciding which markets to service.

The catalogue is enormous

Luminate reported 253 million tracks sitting on audio streaming services at the end of 2025, with roughly 106,000 uploaded per day, up from 99,000 the year before. Global on-demand audio streams passed 5.1 trillion, up 9.6 percent.

The distribution is what matters. Around 120.5 million of those 253 million tracks received fewer than ten streams in the year. Eighty-eight percent received a thousand or fewer. Tracks in the one million to fifty million range accounted for 49.4 percent of all streaming volume.

Read together: the median track on a streaming service earns effectively nothing, and roughly half of all listening happens in a band that a successful independent release can genuinely reach.

What the thresholds mean

Spotify's track monetisation policy requires a track to reach at least 1,000 streams in the previous twelve months to be included in the recorded royalty pool, assessed on a rolling basis and reviewed monthly, along with a minimum number of unique listeners that is not published.

The practical consequence for a catalogue is uneven. A track that sits near the threshold qualifies in some months and not others, so its earnings history has gaps that are policy rather than performance. Reporting on such a track without knowing this looks like volatility in demand.

What the top end looks like

Spotify's Loud and Clear reporting for 2025 gives a useful map of the upper part of the distribution: over 11 billion dollars paid out, more than 13,800 artists generating at least 100,000 dollars from Spotify alone, over 1,500 generating more than a million, and the artist ranked 100,000th earning roughly 7,300 dollars against about 350 dollars in 2015.

Two figures are worth holding onto beyond the headlines. More than a third of the artists earning over 10,000 dollars in 2025 were fully independent or started that way. And over 90 percent of royalties paid to fully do-it-yourself artists went to acts who were releasing before 2024, which points hard at catalogue depth rather than a single breakout.

MIDiA, measuring a wider definition that includes expanded rights, put the market at 39.5 billion dollars growing 9.4 percent, with non-major share rising.

What follows for measurement

If the economics reward depth, the metrics should measure depth.

Repeat listening over reach. Streams per listener and repeat listener share describe whether an audience returns, which is what produces catalogue income over years rather than a spike over weeks.

Followers over listeners. Followers are the audience you can reach again without paying for distribution, which is the asset the numbers above say pays.

Catalogue performance, not only the new release. If most royalties for sustained independent artists come from work released before this year, then a report that only covers the current single is describing a minority of the income.

Territory mix against where growth is. The regional growth figures are not academic. A project with organic traction in a fast-growing region has an opportunity that a project concentrated in a mature market does not.

The honest summary

The market is bigger every year, the catalogue is growing faster than the market, and the payout thresholds mean the bottom of the distribution earns approximately nothing.

That is not a reason for pessimism. It is a reason to stop optimising for a large number of shallow listens and to start measuring whether the people who arrive come back.