et’s call a spade a spade or just be candid. As human beings, we are guilty of dishonesty. If psychological breakthroughs through decades have taught us anything, it is simple: as a race, we do lie. It is not about character assassination and not applicable to every single person. We are, after all, fallible.

But where human beings lie, data doesn’t lie. It is how we dissect it. To that end, a look at Spotify’s data can reveal our listening habits, which artists have the potential to become the future of music, and which playlists are more popular than others.

According to data acquired by Instep, EQUAL Pakistan, a playlist that highlights women in music, featured Nehaal Naseem and Nimra Mehra as EQUAL Pakistan ambassadors for January and February, respectively. The EQUAL Pakistan ambassador for March is Zeb Bangash.

When looking at the Fresh Finds playlist, which highlights younger, emerging artists, Zeeshan Ali was featured in January and Aashir Wajahat in February, respectively. The latter made a splash with his recent release, ‘Sadqay’ in February.

In fact, Aashir Wajahat shone significantly in 2024 by finding a spot on Spotify Pakistan’s Weekly Charts with ‘Sadqay’. Since its release on February 1, 2024, the single has captured global attention, been added to 100,000 playlists and reaching over 1 million listeners worldwide. The song also made it to Spotify’s Desi Pop playlist and over 12 editorial playlists.

Another artist who has seen a significant rise in popularity is Annural Khalid. In addition to being an EQUAL Pakistan ambassador, she is the first female artist to have made it to Spotify’s RADAR initiative. Since its inception, the quarterly platform has featured Hasan Raheem, Taha G, Maanu and Hassan and Roshaan.

As for money, the calculated number paid to artists or songwriters is not done directly. The structure of payment by the platform means paying selected rights holders (record labels, publishers, PROs, collecting societies) and distributors. As for how they make money, it is through two sources — Spotify Premium subscribers and advertisers on Spotify’s Free tier. Nearly 70 percent of this money is paid out to music rights holders in what is called the “royalty pool.”

Spotify’s royalty pool is based on each rights holder’s streamshare. This money is not divvied up based on a fixed amount per stream because Premium subscribers do not pay per stream; they pay a subscription fee for access.

When probed about the audio platform’s music catalogue, they confirmed that its catalogue contains more than 100 million songs. In other words, it represents most of the national and international music catalogue in Pakistan.

While 2024 is far from over, in 2023, in a historic first, the music catalogues of DIY artists and those signed to independent record labels accounted for nearly half of all revenue generated on Spotify. This resulted in a total revenue of almost 4.5 billion dollars, a significant fourfold increase on 2017 figures. This is the highest revenue that independent artists have ever generated from a single retailer in a single year. To provide further perspective, the 4.5 billion dollars in revenue exceeds the total recorded music industry revenue in every country except the US, according to IFPI’s Global Music Report 2023.

Since its inception, Spotify’s prominent EQUAL Pakistan ambassadors have featured Arooj Aftab, Mehak Ali, Hadiqa Kiani, Natasha Baig, Zoha Zuberi, Nazia Hassan, Momina Mustehsan, Natasha Noorani, Shae Gill, Maria Unera, Natasha Humera Ejaz, Tina Sani, Sanam Marvi, Aima Baig, Annural Khalid, Yashal Shahid, Fariha Pervez, Asteria, Hareem Rashid, Maher Anjum, Nehaal Naseem, Nimra Mehra and Zeb Bangash.