A Business Insider report from 2020 found artists earn as little as $0.0033 per stream. The streaming service does not pay per stream, instead using a system that pays artists based on "streamshare." This payment could vary depending on how music is streamed or agreements with licensors, Spotify says.
As for how much Spotify pays per stream, they pay roughly $0.04 per 10 streams. So, 1000 streams would be around $4, and 100,000 streams would be $400. Remember, this result may be lower based on certain factors such as if only half of your song was listened to.
Instead of paying artists directly, Spotify pays rights holders—record labels, distributors or others—who artists allow to put their music on the platform, and who in turn pay the artists with the money earned on the streaming service.
Spotify – 0.0026-0.0049 dollars; YouTube – $0.004. These statistics make it possible to understand how much one billion streams can bring. Let us turn to arithmetic and do not forget that royalties will be shared between authors and performers.
He is the first artist ever to surpass 50 billion streams on Spotify, which would generate over $218 million in royalties.
Suffolk-raised superstar Ed Sheeran has netted almost £16million in royalties from his catalogue of romantic love songs, a new study has found.
Spotify keeps a playlist of nearly all songs with over one billion streams. As of January 2023, a total of at least 344 songs have reached this milestone.
But for various reasons—licensing, money, PR pressure—it's tougher than expected. As controversy continues to circle around Spotify, more and more artists want their music removed from the platform. But why is it so hard?
The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers found artists were paid an average of just over half a cent per stream in 2018 and under a third of a cent in 2020. The average artist pay rate declined 43% over two years.
Tidal pays the most per stream at $0.013, followed by Apple Music at $0.01 per stream. Spotify, on the other hand, pays out $0.0033 per stream — dramatically lower than both Apple Music and Tidal, as well as Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and Deezer. The only company that pays lower rates than Spotify is Pandora.
These are the number of streams that musicians need to obtain to earn $1 or $1000. Therefore, if a musician gets 1,000,000 views on Spotify (where only the biggest can get), his earnings would be $4,366.
How Much Does Apple Music Pay Per Million Streams? Artists receive about $7,000 to $10,000 per million streams on Apple Music. That's a decent chunk of change, in my opinion. With Apple Music alone, you could easily be making $84,000 to $120,000 a year if you were able to generate a million streams per month.
Based on the average payout of $0.003/stream, to earn $1000 on Spotify, you'll need to get 300,000 – 350,000 streams. But again, how much Spotify pay per stream varies, so the number can range from 150,000 – 600,000 thousand streams per $1000.
Since 2013, Spotify has published a yearly list of its most-streamed artists, which has been topped by Drake and Bad Bunny a record three times, with Bad Bunny being the only artist to do so on consecutive years (2020, 2021 and 2022).
Unsurprisingly, Drake still holds the top spot with over $110 million in total earnings. Ariana Grande is the highest-earning female artist on Spotify, with BTS securing its position as the top-earning band. Don't forget, Spotify is just one source of revenue for artists.
Consequently, for major-label artists, 1 billion video streams on an official music video would generate about $2.6 million globally.
It is no secret that Bieber the record for most all-time monthly listeners by an artist in 2021. The artist had an unbelievable 83.3 million listeners in August alone. Using this number and Spotify's reported minimum rate of $ 0.004 per stream, we can estimate the Canadian made at least $ 333,200 per listener.
The top 100 most-streamed artists of 2022 is experiencing a rap takeover. Sitting at number one is Drake, who is now this year's top-streamed artist so far with at 6.7 billion in streams.
Judging by our rudimentary maths, that equates to just under $153 million dollars (or €126 million) for his own tracks - not counting whatever cut he receives from the tracks he guests on. And that's just from Spotify revenue alone. In short, Drake is a very rich man.
Spotify pays artists between $0.003 - $0.005 per stream on average. That works out as an approx revenue split of 70/30 - so that's 70% to the artist/rights holders and 30% to Spotify.
Noted streaming cynic Taylor Swift is number 40 with $10.5 million. Playing hard-to-get with Spotify seems to have cost Swift a higher position. Outside of Spotify, she was named the 25th top-earning celebrity in 2021.