Canada just posted its eleventh straight year of recorded-music growth. The market reached CAD$957.9 million in 2025, up 5.6%, according to the IFPI Global Music Report 2026. IFPI means the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the body that counts the global business.
That ranks Canada ninth in the world, a notch below 2024 even as revenue rose, because bigger markets are growing faster.
But the headline that matters for anyone selling music out of Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver is not the CAD$957.9 million. It is this: 92% of Canadian artists’ Spotify royalties came from listeners outside Canada.
The market grew, but the money left
Streaming did the heavy lifting at home. Spotify’s Loud & Clear report for Canada put 2025 royalties to Canadian artists at more than CAD$544 million, a 19% jump year over year.
IFPI logged Canadian streaming revenue of CAD$747 million, up 4.5%, with ad-supported audio and video up 9.4% and physical formats up a striking 15.9%.
The catch is where the earnings originate. Of that CAD$544 million Canadian artists banked on Spotify, more than nine in every ten dollars was paid by someone abroad, mostly in the United States, then Europe and Latin America.
92% is a passport, not a border
Spotify’s Canada figures break down like a export report, not a domestic one:
- Canadian artists were discovered internationally more than 3.56 billion times in 2025.
- More than 370 acts earned CAD$100,000 or more; over 100 cleared CAD$500,000; nearly 70 passed CAD$1 million.
- French-language music royalties rose 38% globally since 2023, meaning Quebec’s export lane is widening too.
This is the same pattern InterSpace Daily tracked in the UK, where roughly three quarters of British artists’ Spotify money also comes from abroad. Mature English-language markets do not grow at home. They grow by being heard everywhere else.
What the CRTC levy actually covers
Canada’s policy answer to all this is the Online Streaming Act, the 2023 law that updated the Broadcasting Act. It is enforced by the CRTC, which means the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
In May 2026 the CRTC issued Broadcasting Regulatory Policy 2026-96, tripling the base contribution large streaming platforms owe to Canadian content from 5% to 15% of their Canadian revenue.
Here is the nuance most coverage skips. The 15% rate targets audiovisual services such as Netflix, Disney+ and Apple TV+. Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music classify as audio-only, and Spotify has stated the May ruling does not currently apply to it. Audio DSPs sit under a separate contribution still under review, and the original 5% audio levy is paused pending a Federal Court of Appeal challenge from Spotify, Apple and Amazon. DSP means digital service provider.
The United States has flagged the whole regime as a trade irritant ahead of the 2026 review of CUSMA, the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement. In other words, the lever meant to fund domestic music is stuck in court and does not cleanly touch the platforms where Canadian artists actually earn.
What it means for an independent Canadian artist
The takeaway is not that CanCon rules are pointless. It is that the growth is offshore, and a distribution strategy built around domestic quotas is aiming at the smaller pool.
- If 92% of the money is foreign, your release has to be delivered cleanly to every market, not just the ones with local editorial teams.
- Francophone acts are exporting too, so metadata language tags and territory-level reporting matter as much for a Montreal artist as a Toronto one.
- The threshold jumps happen when discovery plays convert abroad, which rewards distributors that hit the widest set of DSPs and report royalties at territory level.
InterSpace Distribution delivers DDEX-native to the full DSP map and reports earnings by territory, so a Canadian artist can see the US, French and Latin American splits that make up the real 92%. DDEX means Digital Data Exchange, the standard that keeps credits and payments attached to a release. For labels and aggregators, ToneGrid adds white-label delivery with anti-fraud and KYC built in.
Canada’s chart says the country is a top-ten market. Canada’s royalty statements say its artists are an export business. The distributor you pick should be built for the second fact.
