Pakistan added streaming listeners faster than almost any market Spotify entered in 2021. It has not added the rails that pay them.
Five years of Spotify, in numbers
Spotify launched in Pakistan in February 2021. In its five-year recap published on 21 April 2026, the company framed the growth like this:
- Listenership in Pakistan up more than 750% since launch.
- Streams of Pakistani artists up more than sevenfold.
- The number of Pakistani artists on the platform up nearly 75%.
- More than 15 million playlists built by local users.
- The average listener in Pakistan plays more than 140 artists a year.
That last figure is the one distributors should read twice. An audience sampling 140 artists a year is a discovery market, not a catalogue market. Spotify has staffed it accordingly, with Pakka Hit Hai, ICON Pakistan, RADAR Pakistan and Fresh Finds Pakistan as local editorial surfaces.
The charts went local. The money went abroad.
Music Ally reported in December 2025 that rapper Talha Anjum and producer Umair were Spotify’s most-streamed local acts in Pakistan for the year, with Hasan Raheem at No. 3 after finishing No. 8 in 2024, ahead of Atif Aslam and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
The Express Tribune’s write-up of the same Wrapped data put Pakistani music consumption up 70% on the year, with hip-hop up 35%.
Where those plays are counted is a different story. Spotify data reported by Dawn back in 2022 already showed more than 63% of Pakistani hip-hop streams originating outside the country, with India, the United States and the United Kingdom the top listening markets.
Four years on, the pattern holds. HAVI, named RADAR Pakistan artist for Q3 2026 in late July, grew his audience more than 335% in a year, with listeners concentrated in Bangladesh, the US, the UK, Canada and the UAE.
The rails underneath were written in 1962
Pakistan’s operative copyright law is still the Copyright Ordinance, 1962. In March 2026 the National Assembly introduced a Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2026, tabled by Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr Tariq Fazal, and referred it to committee. It has not passed.
CMO means collective management organisation: the body that licenses public performance and broadcast use, then distributes what it collects. Pakistan has one, COMP, the Collective Organisation for Music Rights in Pakistan, set up under the Intellectual Property Organization of Pakistan as the country’s first performing rights society.
Synergyzer’s July 2026 survey of the Pakistani music business described royalty collection as still hampered by inefficiency and weak enforcement. Live tickets at PKR 2,000 to 10,000 and merchandise adding 20 to 30% to touring revenue do more earning work than royalty statements.
IFPI’s Global Music Report 2026 put global recorded revenue at 31.7 billion dollars, up 6.4%. Pakistan is not broken out in it. Its artists are earning inside other countries’ line items.
What that means operationally
If most of your streams are consumed outside Pakistan, your distribution setup matters more than your local label relationship.
- Treat recording and composition as separate income streams. Recording royalties flow through your distributor. Publishing and performance income needs a society relationship, whether COMP at home or one covering your export markets.
- Deliver where the plays are. Gulf, UK, US, Canada and Bangladesh coverage is not optional for a Pakistani rap release, and Anghami belongs in the delivery set rather than as an afterthought.
- Get credits right at delivery. Producer and featured-artist credits set in the metadata are what make multi-party splits payable without manual reconciliation.
- Watch your tier mix. Free-tier streams pay materially less than premium ones, and a market growing this fast on discovery will skew free.
- Keep a per-territory royalty view. If most of your income is foreign, currency and payout timing become planning problems, not accounting footnotes.
It is the same gap we have tracked next door: India added four million paid subscribers in 2025 and still converts only 8% of its streamers, and coverage decisions there follow the logic in our JioSaavn breakdown for indie artists.
Pakistan’s growth is real and documented. Its collection infrastructure is a bill sitting in committee. Until that changes, a Pakistani artist’s income is a distribution question, decided by which territories a release reaches and how cleanly the splits are recorded.
