Spotify's ₦60bn for Nigerian artists, and the per-stream gap behind it

Spotify's annual Loud & Clear numbers for Nigeria were reported on 16 March 2026, and the headline was big: Nigerian artists generated more than ₦60bn on Spotify in 2025, up more than 140% over two years, from 30.3 billion streams. About 58% of those royalties came from independent artists or labels. Spotify also said Nigerian artists made up more than 80% of the tracks on its Nigeria Daily Top 50.

Those are good numbers for a scene that has spent a decade exporting its sound. Divide one by the other, though, and you get a different story.

How much is a Nigerian stream worth?

TechCabal works the Loud & Clear figures out to about ₦1.98 per stream for Nigerian artists in 2025. That is an average across every listener, wherever they are, and it is gross: labels, distributors and publishers take their cut before an artist sees anything.

The headline growth also needs reading carefully. Music Ally points out that Spotify's earlier report put 2024 payouts at ₦58bn, so 2025 grew by about 3.4%, not by anything like the two-year figure. Music Ally also notes that the naira's sharp fall in 2024 partly explains that year's spike. In dollars, Music Ally puts the 2025 total at about $44.3m at current exchange rates. Measured in naira, Nigerian artists' Spotify income is growing slowly, and swings in the exchange rate shape it as much as listening does.

Why the gap exists

Spotify doesn't publish per-country payout rates, so the gap can only be estimated. A report from Africa Global Forum, a diaspora peer network, estimates (citing the analytics firm Chartlex) that a million streams from Nigerian listeners pay roughly $300, against roughly $10,000 for a million from Swedish listeners. That is a gap of about 33 times. The report labels these as estimates and tells readers to treat them as bands, not prices, and we'd do the same.

The mechanism isn't controversial. Streaming royalties come out of what subscribers and advertisers in each market pay in. TechCabal reports that Premium costs about ₦1,600 ($1.16) a month in Nigeria, against $4.29 in South Africa, $2.07 in Ghana and $3.23 in Kenya. The Africa Global Forum report uses a lower figure, about $0.85, and calls Nigeria the cheapest Premium market in the world. The two don't match, probably because of different dates and exchange rates, which is another reason to treat any dollar figure here loosely.

The report also does its own arithmetic: ₦60bn over 30.3 billion streams averages about $1.46 per thousand streams, which it says is close to five times the local Nigerian rate. Its reading is that the money paying Nigerian artists comes mostly from listeners abroad. That is the report's inference from estimated rates, not a Spotify figure, but it fits what Spotify itself says.

What Spotify says it will do

Spotify's Sub-Saharan Africa managing director, Jocelyne Muhutu-Remy, told TechCabal that Nigerian earnings will grow because more Nigerians pay for music, not because prices go up. She said the company has to take "people's reality" into account. Spotify says it is putting money into local pricing, telco partnerships, payment integrations and other ways to pay. TechCabal cites an earlier example: a 2023 deal with Orange in the DRC, Madagascar and Mali that bundled music with mobile plans.

She also made the case for the local fan as a route to overseas money: a listener in Nigeria may pay about a dollar, she said, but has relatives in Canada or the US paying "double digits". It's a candid line. Spotify's own Africa lead is describing the diaspora as the business model.

What are artists saying?

The public reaction we could find is small, so treat it as a sample, not a survey. One post on X, on 17 March, did the same division (about ₦2 a stream), set it beside the $300-versus-$10,000 estimate and called the numbers "a complicated story". Another thread argued that Spotify is celebrating the ₦60bn while the systems around streaming lag behind. It pointed to Musixmatch, the lyrics service, which it said has no Afrobeats category and no translations for languages such as Twi, Amharic and Zulu. We looked for artists comparing their own payouts on Reddit but couldn't open the threads, so we haven't used them.

What we think

"Grow the payers, don't raise the price" is the right call for listeners, and Spotify deserves credit for saying it on the record. But it is a slow plan, and in the meantime it leaves Nigerian artists in a trap. Their home audience makes the hits (more than 80% of the local Top 50) while listeners abroad pay most of the bills.

That has knock-on effects worth naming. Artists whose fans are mostly at home, singing in Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa or Pidgin to people in Lagos and Kano, earn the least per play, while acts that cross over to London and Houston earn the most. Over time that pushes careers, A&R budgets and playlist pitching toward whatever travels, and away from music made for the domestic market. The 58% independent share is the hopeful part, but independents feel the per-stream gap most directly, usually with no label advance to cushion it.

Three things would help, and none of them needs a higher price:

• Disclosure. Spotify should publish per-country payout ranges, even rough ones, so artists aren't planning careers around third-party estimates.
• Telco bundles that show their working. If Spotify scales mobile bundles, artists should be told how bundle revenue feeds the royalty pool. A cheap bundle that counts as a subscriber but adds little to the pool would grow the payer count without growing artist income.
• Income that doesn't depend on the pool. Payment rails in naira for tips, merch, presales and fan subscriptions let a Lagos fan pay a Lagos artist directly, without a per-stream rate set by local purchasing power.

Until then, ₦60bn is worth celebrating as proof of an audience, and should be read carefully as a measure of income.