Spotify’s CEO Invested Millions in Military Technology as the Company Continues to Pay Artists Less Than a Cent Per Stream

Launched in 2008, Spotify has grown to become the most popular music streaming service on the market with 777 million users, 300 million of which are paid subscribers.¹ While free accounts have limited usage (a certain number of skips, advertisements, etc.), premium accounts give unlimited access to nearly every song in existence and range from monthly prices of $6.99 for students to $12.99 for everyone else. That is billions of dollars of revenue coming in every year. With that much money flowing into the company’s pockets, it would be reasonable to assume that Spotify does a great job of ensuring that artists––the very people who make their company run––are adequately compensated, right? 

Here’s a breakdown.

Spotify pays their artists on the basis of the amount of streams per month. Less streams means less pay, which makes sense at the surface level. Artists with only a thousand monthly streams shouldn’t be paid the same amount as those with over a million, that would just be bad business. The problem here is with the amount of money being allocated to each stream. Spotify is lucrative about how much they pay. They “don’t believe that a ‘per-stream rate’ is a meaningful number to analyze. All streaming services pay essentially the same way: Roughly two-thirds of music revenue is paid back to rightsholders based on their streamshare.” ² 

This round-about explanation gives no real information on how much they’re actually paying artists. However it’s fairly easy to calculate the per-stream rate, and the general consensus is that Spotify pays out around $0.004 per stream.³

This miniscule amount of money gives an impression that Spotify is a struggling company, unable to pay musicians adequately for their art. This is false, and the real issue at hand is greed. In 2023 now former Spotify CEO Daniel Ek made $345 million in share value, a number that  equivocates to around 115 billion streams, more than any artist (yes, that includes Taylor Swift) has ever achieved on Spotify.⁴

Even with the massive amounts of money flowing into his pockets, Ek spent his time as CEO trying to figure out how to pay artists even less, a feat the company achieved in July 2024 by bundling premium subscriptions, which was done secretly, without warning, and is nearly impossible to opt out of. The bundling gave subscribers access to 15 free hours of audiobooks at the same price they were previously paying, effectively lowering the per-stream rate for artists even further. 

When he was not busy ripping off artists, Ek was investing. 

In June 2025, through his venture capital firm Prima Materia, Ek led an investment of $693.6 million into European Defense company Helsing.⁵ Among other things, Helsing’s primary products are advanced AI strike drones, including their more recent product the HX-2, which “is an electrically propelled x-wing-precision munition with up to 100 km range. Advanced on-board AI enables full electronic warfare and jamming resistance, […].” ⁶ 

It is more than likely that a significant portion of the money Ek has invested into Helsing has come from his earnings at Spotify. Why should artists that work with Spotify suffer while the CEO is busy funnelling millions of dollars into private military companies? People were outraged, and rightfully so. Ek’s investment caused so much backlash that on January 1st, 2026, Ek officially stepped down after twenty years as CEO, promoting then-presidents Alex Norström and Gustav Söderström to Co-CEOs.

Companies like Spotify should be championing art, not profits. There are plenty of other streaming services available (Tidal, Apple Music, etc.) who––though they are not entirely ethical in their businesses––pay their artists more than four tenths of a cent. While it is not likely that massive streaming companies such as Spotify will care about art or artists as much as they should, Ek’s removal shows that with enough outrage, change is possible.

Works Cited

1. Spotify, newsroom.spotify.com/company-info/.
2. “How Royalties Work on Spotify.” Spotify, artists.spotify.com/royalties-guide.
3. “How much does Spotify pay per stream?” Free Your Music, 18 May 2026, freeyourmusic.com/blog/how-much-does-spotify-pay-per-stream.
4. Willings, Sam. “Daniel Ek earned more from Spotify in the past 12 months than any artist has ever earned on the platform.” MusicTech, 5 Aug. 2024, musictech.com/news/industry/daniel-ek-made-more-money-spotify-in-2024-than-any-artist/.
5. Browne, Ryan. “Spotify’s Daniel Ek leads $694 million investment in defense startup Helsing.” CNBC, 17 June 2025, www.cnbc.com/2025/06/17/spotifys-daniel-ek-leads-investment-in-defense-startup-helsing.html.
6. “Helsing unveils intelligent strike drone for mass and precision .” Helsing AI, 1 Dec. 2024, helsing.ai/newsroom/helsing-unveils-intelligent-strike-drone-for-mass-and-precision.