Spotify: The Francophone World Is Becoming a Global Market; Francophone Africa Is Still in Its Infancy
The French streaming market continues to grow, while Francophone music is gaining an increasingly strong foothold internationally. With 319 million euros paid out to French rights holders in 2025, Spotify highlights both the vitality of local creativity and the emergence of new growth drivers, particularly in Francophone Africa. Streaming has never been more lucrative for French rights holders. To mark the simultaneous release of its Loud & Clear France report and its Francophonie 2026 report, Spotify announced that it had paid nearly 319 million euros in royalties to French rights holders in 2025—more than triple the amount distributed in 2018. But beyond this new record, the company’s central message lies elsewhere: the growth of Francophone music now comes largely from international markets. Internationalization “For the first time, half of the…