In the summer of 2024, Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” became the soundtrack to millions of lives, racking up 1.6 billion streams on Spotify and earning her a number-one spot on the platform’s year-end charts. It was a triumph of the streaming age, a pop confection that catapulted a mid-level artist into the stratosphere through sheer algorithmic momentum and viral TikTok ubiquity. Yet behind the champagne-soaked success story lies a more sobering question that independent musicians are asking themselves every day: Is Spotify really worth their time to promote their music?
The answer, as it turns out, is as layered and contradictory as the music industry itself in 2025 a landscape where Taylor Swift fans are suing Ticketmaster for price gouging, where Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s beef generated $7.6 million in revenue for “Not Like Us”, and where TikTok now determines 84% of the songs that crack the Billboard Global 200. It’s a world where the old gatekeepers have been replaced by algorithmic overlords, and where the promise of democratization collides head-on with the brutal mathematics of streaming economics.
The Numbers Game: When Pennies Don’t Add Up
Let’s talk cold, hard cash. Spotify pays artists somewhere between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream on average, meaning you need roughly 285,000 streams to earn a measly $1,000. A musician running a $100 promotional campaign on Spotify might see around 1,000 new listeners and 1,200 streams, netting approximately $9.76 in royalties. From a purely financial perspective, that’s a catastrophic return on investment. “Spending $100 to make $9.76 is obviously not a great return,” noted one artist who tested the platform’s paid promotion tools.
But here’s where things get interesting. While Spotify generated $10 billion in royalties for the music industry in 2024, the distribution remains staggeringly unequal. Nearly 1,500 artists earned over $1 million from Spotify last year, and 22,100 artists pulled in over $50,000. Yet an estimated 87% of all tracks on the platform don’t even reach the 1,000-stream threshold. Spotify implemented in April 2024 a policy that cost independent musicians approximately $37.5 million in lost royalties in its first year. It’s the kind of winner-take-all economy that would make a tech bro’s heart sing and a struggling folk singer’s stomach churn.
The reality? Spotify doesn’t operate on a pay-per-stream model at all. Instead, it uses a “streamshare” system, allocating 70% of its revenue to rightsholders based on the proportion of total streams they represent. This means your streams are competing in a zero-sum game against every other artist on the platform. Independent artists, lacking the promotional muscle of major labels, often find themselves drowned out in a sea of 120,000 new tracks uploaded daily.
The Algorithm: Master or Servant?
If you want to understand modern music promotion, you need to understand the algorithm that opaque, all-powerful digital deity that determines who gets heard and who disappears into the void. Spotify’s recommendation engine analyzes listener behavior with surgical precision: save rates, completion rates, skip rates, and playlist adds. Songs with save rates above 5% receive significantly more algorithmic promotion, appearing in approximately 40% more Discover Weekly placements. Songs gaining 500+ streams within 24 hours of release are four times more likely to be picked up by algorithmic playlists.
This is where the game changes. Discovery Mode, Spotify’s controversial promotional tool, allows artists to accept a lower royalty rate (typically 30% less) in exchange for algorithmic priority in Radio, Autoplay, and Spotify Mixes. The results can be dramatic: Spotify claims Discovery Mode provides a 50% increase in saves, 44% more user playlist adds, and 37% growth in follows during the first month. One artist reported a 1,300% stream lift on a single track after enrolling in Discovery Mode.
But it’s a Faustian bargain. You’re essentially paying Spotify with future earnings for the privilege of being heard, and there’s no guarantee of success. Some artists with fewer than 25,000 monthly listeners reported mixed results, with overall profile growth actually declining during their Discovery Mode campaigns. As one musician put it, “Did discovery mode help me at all, or did it hurt me, or was it kind of an even trade?”
The Cultural Moment: From Brat Summer to Ticketmaster Hell
To understand the Spotify question in 2025, you have to zoom out and look at the cultural landscape artists are navigating. This is the era where Charli XCX’s “Brat” wasn’t just an album it was a lime-green aesthetic that infiltrated politics, fashion, and the very definition of what it means to be demure and mindful (or decidedly not). Chappell Roan went from obscurity to six Grammy nominations, powered by TikTok virality and algorithmic playlisting. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour grossed $2 billion, becoming the highest-grossing tour of all time, while simultaneously exposing the rotting infrastructure of live music through the Ticketmaster debacle.
In November 2022, Swift fans endured what can only be described as digital warfare trying to secure Eras Tour tickets. The presale crashed spectacularly under “unprecedented demand” and “bot attacks,” with tickets instantly appearing on resale markets at astronomical markups. The Federal Trade Commission later accused ticket scalpers of using fake accounts to purchase 379,776 tickets from Ticketmaster, making $7 million in profit, including $1.2 million from Swift’s tour alone. Fans sued Ticketmaster under RICO statutes, the same laws used to combat organized crime.
The message was clear: the infrastructure of the music industry, from ticketing to streaming, is broken. Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s alleged monopoly means that 82% of independent artists can’t afford to tour in 2025, even though touring has traditionally been where musicians make real money. Streaming now accounts for 91.3% of U.S. music consumption, yet paradoxically, nearly half of independent artists (49.5%) report that streaming is their biggest earner despite only 19.6% achieving over 1,000 monthly Spotify listeners.
TikTok: The New Kingmaker (and Soul Crusher)
If Spotify is the kingdom, TikTok is the kingmaker. In 2024, 13 of the 16 number-one hits in the U.S. were tied to TikTok trends. The platform has become so powerful that record labels now prioritize signing artists based on follower counts and user-generated content. TikTok users are 74% more likely to discover and share new music than the average short-form video user.
But this power comes at a brutal cost. Musicians describe their relationship with TikTok as “working in the content factory”. The pressure to constantly create viral moments, recording one song, then producing 50+ videos of the same 30-second clip, is driving artists to the brink of burnout. As one musician lamented on Reddit, “I’m tired of how marketing a small band is now recording one song, then making 50+ videos of the same <1-minute clip of that song ad nauseam. I’m not currently in a band, but I feel like I would blow my brains out if I had to do that soulless bullshit”.
The mental health crisis in music has reached epidemic proportions. Musicians have one of the highest suicide rates among occupational groups in both England and the United States. A 2019 survey found that 73% of independent musicians struggle with mental illness, rising to 80% among those aged 18-25. The culprits? Economic insecurity, performance anxiety, relentless touring schedules, and the pressure to maintain a constant online presence.
High-profile artists like Chappell Roan and Shawn Mendes have spoken publicly about burnout, while researchers describe the music industry as “profoundly dangerous” for mental health. The algorithmic treadmill never stops. You’re only as relevant as your last viral moment, and the platforms offer no rest, no off-season, no nights off built into the tour schedule.
The Alternative Universe: Bandcamp and the Dream of Direct Support
Not everyone is playing Spotify’s game. Bandcamp, the artist-friendly platform that allows musicians to set their own prices and keep a larger share of revenue, has paid out $1.47 billion to artists to date. During Bandcamp Fridays, when the platform waives its usual 15% fee, artists collectively earned $3.5 million in a single 24-hour period in August 2025. Since the program’s inception during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has generated over $140 million for musicians.
“After five years, it’s fantastic to see another successful Bandcamp Friday,” explained Dan Melnick, Bandcamp’s General Manager. “As an artist-first community, we’ve continued to be on the front line of direct artist support, not just on our Bandcamp Fridays, but 24/7, all year round, as artists should always be paid fairly for their work”.
The difference in philosophy is stark. While Spotify pays between $0.003 and $0.004 per stream, Apple Music pays $6.20 per 1,000 streams, Amazon Music pays $8.80, and YouTube pays $4.80. Bandcamp allows fans to pay what they want, often resulting in tips that exceed the asking price. One artist found a fan had paid £100 for a £1 track, with the message: “It wasn’t a mistake, go buy yourself something sexy”.
Yet Bandcamp serves a different function; it’s a community for die-hard fans, not a discovery engine for casual listeners. As one musician explained, “Every band is gonna have fans who want that kinda stuff, that’s just how fandom has always worked”. Streaming brought in more money for independent artists than physical or digital download sales in 2024, but that doesn’t mean it’s sustainable on its own.
The Verdict: Building Audiences, Not Cashing Checks
So is Spotify promotion worth it? The answer depends entirely on what you’re trying to accomplish. If your goal is direct financial return from streaming royalties, then Spotify promotion is almost certainly not worth it. You’ll spend far more on promotion than you’ll ever recoup in per-stream payments. It’s a losing proposition, mathematically speaking.
But if your goal is long-term financial sustainability and audience building, then Spotify can be a crucial piece of the puzzle. The key is shifting your mindset from direct-response marketing to awareness marketing. You’re not selling a product; you’re building an audience. With an audience, you can monetize through live shows, merchandise, Patreon subscriptions, Bandcamp sales, and exclusive content. In 2024, independent artists and labels collectively generated more than $5 billion from Spotify, roughly 50% of all indie streaming revenue.
“The switch is to view your promotion not as direct response marketing, but as awareness marketing,” explains one music marketing strategist. “In the same way that Coca-Cola doesn’t expect to make their ad spend back directly from their Super Bowl commercial, you shouldn’t expect to make money from showing your music to a bunch of people”.
The most successful approach appears to be multi-platform. Use TikTok for viral discovery moments (while protecting your mental health with boundaries and breaks). Use Spotify to capture those discovered listeners and feed them into algorithmic playlists. Use Bandcamp to monetize your most dedicated fans. Use live shows when economically feasible to create unforgettable experiences and sell merchandise. It’s exhausting, it’s complex, and it requires the entrepreneurial skills of a tech startup founder combined with the artistic sensitivity of a poet.
The music industry in 2025 has never been more accessible and never been more brutal. The gatekeepers are gone, replaced by algorithms that don’t play favorites but do reward engagement, consistency, and a bit of luck. Spotify isn’t a silver bullet—it’s one tool in an arsenal that independent artists must wield with strategic precision, realistic expectations, and an understanding that the real currency isn’t streams, but human connection.
As Sabrina Carpenter herself said about “Espresso” hitting charts: “Full transparency: I’ve never really been on charts until quite recently, so it’s a newfound… I’m interested. It’s not the reason I write music and it’s not the reason I’ll ever write music”. Perhaps that’s the healthiest perspective an artist can have in the streaming age—chase the connection, not the metrics. The streams will follow, or they won’t. But at least you’ll still have your soul.
And in an industry where musicians have one of the highest suicide rates, where burnout is epidemic, and where the content factory never sleeps, keeping your soul might be the most radical act of all.
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