San Francisco, Mar 19 (IANS): Swedish music streaming service Spotify has paid over $23 billion in royalties to rights holders, including over $5 billion in 2020, which is up from $3.3 billion in 2017.

Rights holders are distributors or record labels who then pay artists from the royalties they earn.

Nearly 870 artists' catalogs on Spotify generated $1 million or more in royalties, reports The Verge.

The company said that there are 1.2 million artists with over 1,000 listeners on the platform.

Nearly 15 per cent, or 184,500, of their catalogs generated recording and publishing royalties of at least $1,000, it added.

But since these "payments don't go directly to artists and are instead paid to their rights holders" which then refer to the contracts they hold with artists to pay them".

Spotify currently has more than 340 million active users and 150 million subscribers using its ad-free premium product across 93 countries including India.

The company announced last month that it will arrive in over 80 new countries, along with rolling out 36 new languages on its platform.

It is now available in 12 Indian languages, making it available in a total of 62 languages on the mobile experience.