Brazil and Mexico on Spotify, by the royalty numbers: R$2bn, MX$8.2bn and who actually gets paid

Spotify has published two country cuts of its annual Loud & Clear royalty report. On 11 May 2026 it said Brazilian artists generated about R$2 billion on Spotify in 2025, up 24% on the year before. Two weeks earlier, on 27 April, Expansión reported the Mexican figure from the same report: about MX$8.2 billion for 2025, up 20%. Both are records, and both deserve a closer read than the headline gives them.

What did Spotify say about Brazil?

The Brazilian post (in Portuguese; translations here are ours) opens with Brazil entering the world's eight largest recorded-music markets "for the first time in history", citing the IFPI Global Music Report 2026. Its other claims:

• Royalties generated by Brazilian artists on Spotify grew "at almost double the rate of the market as a whole".
• The number of Brazilian artists generating more than R$1 million on Spotify "more than doubled" in three years. Billboard Brasil adds that more than 40 artists passed R$5 million, almost three times the 2022 figure.
• Royalties generated by Brazilian independent artists or labels exceed the global average of roughly half. Spotify's global Loud & Clear summary says that, worldwide, roughly half of its royalties came from independent artists and labels. So Brazil's independent sector takes a bigger slice than that. Spotify gives no exact Brazilian share.
• Portuguese grew fastest of the languages that generated more than $100 million on Spotify in 2025: up 26% in a year and 51% in two. Funk grew 36%, the fastest of the genres above $50 million.

For scale, Exame, citing industry body Pro-Música Brasil, put the whole Brazilian recorded-music market at R$3.958 billion in 2025, up 14.1%. Against that, 24% is about 1.7 times the market's growth rate. That is fast, though not quite the "almost double" Spotify describes.

And Mexico?

The Mexican edition, "Loud & Clear México 2026", circulated as a Spotify release that Cinecassette reprinted in Spotify's own first-person voice on 29 April. It says:

• Mexican artists generated "almost 8,200 million pesos" in 2025, growth "close to 20%", and more than double what they generated three years earlier.
• "More than half" of those royalties came from listeners outside Mexico, and streams from abroad have nearly tripled in five years.
• Mexican artists made up more than 70% of Spotify Mexico's daily Top 50 in 2025, against "barely 10%" a decade ago.
• Listeners found Mexican artists for the first time more than 9.5 billion times, up 11% on 2024.

Dustee Jenkins, Spotify's chief public affairs officer, gave the numbers to Expansión in an interview and repeated the release's claim that Mexico City consumes more music on Spotify than any other city in the world. Note one wording slip. Expansión describes MX$8.2 billion as what Spotify "paid to the music industry in Mexico", while the release says it is what Mexican artists generated. Those are different things, because more than half of it comes from listeners abroad. The release's wording is the one to use.

Who actually receives the money?

This is the part the headlines skip. In Brazil, Spotify says about two-thirds of its revenue from subscriptions and ads goes to rights holders: labels, distributors, publishers and collecting societies such as ECAD. Those rights holders then pay artists "according to the agreements" between them. Expansión, reporting Jenkins's explanation, puts the share at about 70% and says Spotify keeps the remaining 30%. It also reports that Spotify pays rights holders only for tracks with at least 1,000 streams a year. According to Expansión, Jenkins stressed that Spotify does not pay artists directly, and the paper adds that Spotify neither knows nor supervises the split each artist has agreed with their label or distributor.

So "Brazilian artists generated R$2 billion" means R$2 billion was paid out for their music. It does not mean Brazilian artists received R$2 billion. The Brazilian post also doesn't say whether the figure combines recording and publishing royalties, and its methodology isn't published alongside it.

What we think

Mexico's "more than half from abroad" is the global norm. Spotify's global report says that, on average, artists earn more than half their royalties from outside their home country just two years after their debut. Mexico's figure is presented as a sign of breakout export power, but by Spotify's own numbers it sits about where you would expect. The stand-out Mexican number is the opposite one: domestic artists going from about a tenth of the national Top 50 to more than 70% in ten years. Mexico's story is home-market dominance plus normal export reach. It is not unusual export reach.

Brazil's real signal is the independent share. A market where independents take more than the global "roughly half" is one where self-releasing artists and small labels are capturing the growth, not only the majors. That is good for artists' control over their masters. It also means more of the money passes through distributor dashboards and small-label statements, so the quality of those statements matters more.

These are policy documents, not just reports. The Mexican figures were delivered by Spotify's head of public affairs, and the Loud & Clear site carries a policy roadmap alongside the data. That doesn't make the numbers wrong. But the totals are framed to show streaming working for local artists, at a time when payouts are under scrutiny. Expansión notes Spotify "has received criticism" over how artists can monetise their work.

Who wins: rights holders with Brazilian and Mexican catalogues, whose income grew faster than the global market's 6.4% (per Exame), and the independent labels and distributors behind more than half of Brazil's Spotify royalties. Who could lose out: artists on older deals with low royalty rates, for whom a growing national total can sit next to a flat personal statement, and anyone whose tracks stay under 1,000 streams a year.

What should Brazilian and Mexican artists do with this?

Use the national figures as a benchmark, not a promise. If Spotify says more than half of a typical artist's royalties come from abroad within two years, ask your distributor or label for a territory breakdown and see whether yours matches. If your share of a growing market isn't growing, the gap is in your deal or your registration, not in the platform total. Make sure your publishing is registered with your collecting society too, since that is the separate route by which songwriting money reaches you.