Spotify doesn't pay artists royalties based on any kind of rights agreement between Spotify and the artist. Instead, the music royalties you'll receive as an artist on the platform are based on your agreement with your music distributor or label.
Well, it depends on a few factors: where your audience comes from, if they are free or premium Spotify users, your distribution deal. But generally speaking, Spotify pays out between $0.003 and $0.0084 per stream. So if 100 people stream one of your songs on Spotify, they've earned you between six and eighty cents!
Music on Spotify earns two kinds of royalties: Recording royalties: The money owed to rightsholders for recordings streamed on Spotify, which is paid to artists through the licensor that delivered the music, typically their record label or distributor.
The average price per stream is $0.004. $4 for every 1,000 streams. $4000 for each million streams.
How many streams on Spotify = $1000? On average, you'll have to earn 300,000 to 350,000 streams to generate roughly $1000. Due to those variables we mentioned above, however, streams are not created equally.
How much money is 5000 streams on Spotify? Based on a $0.004 payout per stream, 5000 streams would generate a revenue of $20.
The answer is there's no one-size-fits-all answer for every artist. If you're a new artist with only ten followers, it doesn't matter if you have ten monthly listeners or 1 million monthly listeners. Most artists will only reach 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify if they become very popular.
How Spotify's streaming royalties work. Royalties are the payments that an artist earns from streams. Spotify royalties are specifically distributed from the net revenue collected from ads and Premium subscription fees. Artists are paid monthly.
How do artists get paid from Spotify? Instead of paying the artists directly, Spotify pays the rights holders, who pay the artists. According to Spotify, roughly two-thirds of the revenue from music goes to rights holders.
Streaming Platforms Pay Artists Very Little
The fact of the matter is that independent artists earn relatively little off of all streaming platforms in the form of royalties, including Spotify. Music streaming (and general access to music) is cheaper than ever nowadays for consumers.
Sheeran gets 75,665,830 monthly Spotify listeners based on recent Spotify data. Spotify pays artists about $0.003 per stream, which is $3 for one thousand monthly listeners. Using those numbers, you can estimate that Sheeran earns at least $226,997.49 monthly from Spotify streams alone.
TIDAL ranks higher than both Spotify and Apple Music in terms of royalty rate and the direct artist payouts available on the platform. It's definitely worth weighing up your options when deciding which DSP(s) to upload your music to.
What does Spotify count as a play or one stream of a song? This is important to know for artists, as it is what will count towards your total plays and the revenue you earn. Spotify classifies a single stream of a song when it has been listened to for 30 seconds or more.
We typically process payouts during the first two working weeks of every month. You'll get a monthly payout of your current balance as long as that balance amounts to $10 or more. If your balance is less than $10, we'll continue to accumulate your revenue until it reaches $10 or more.
On a per stream basis, Spotify paid $0.0032, meaning that you would get about $48 for 15000 streams. Most other popular streaming platforms give more per stream, but because of Spotify's huge user base, you will probably get more streams per unit of time than on other streaming platforms.
According to Spotify's public figures, the artist who earns the most on the platform is currently Drake. The Canadian rapper and singer has a massive following on Spotify, with over 50 billion streams to date.
You may see that you are in the 0.5% of listeners of a certain artist on Spotify, it simply means that you are a super fan. You may also be in the top 1%, or even 0.01% of listeners which means the same thing essentially.
What does top 0.1 mean in Spotify? You may also notice that you are among the top 0.1% listeners of a certain artist, which also implies that you are one of their top listeners.
For Spotify, you'll need around 229 streams to make $1. And 249 streams to reach $1 in Amazon Music. With the MusicGateway Streaming Royalties Calculator, you can compare the royalties from different streaming platforms, including the top three platforms plus Tidal, Deezer, and YouTube Music.
"Blinding Lights" by the Weeknd is the most-streamed song on Spotify, with over 3.7 billion streams.
Spotify Earnings
Assuming she makes $3 for every thousand monthly listeners, she cumulatively makes $237,546.52 per month from Spotify. No doubt, Taylor Swift is not only the most popular pop artist in America but also one of the most successful.
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.