How Much Does Spotify Pay Per Stream? We Thoroughly Researched it

Pay per stream of all streaming services:

• Spotify Pay Per Stream
• Napster Pay Per Stream
• Apple Music Pay Per Stream
• Tidal Pay Per Stream
• Deezer Pay Per Stream
• YouTube Pay Per Stream
• Pandora Pay Per Stream
• Amazon Pay Per Stream

Useful articles + tools for royalties:

• Every Average Streaming Royalty Payout
• Music Royalty Calculator

If you want to make a success of yourself in the music industry and to make enough money to live from it, it’s important to understand royalties and how much money you’re making on streaming platforms. In this article, we’re going to cover everything you need to know about how much music streaming services pay, how they pay you, and what you can do to get the most out of your music.

How Much Does Spotify Pay Per Stream?

These different factors mean that Spotify does not pay a set amount per stream and this streaming payout changes per stream. The stream rate might change due to the length of a stream, the country the song was streamed in, whether it was streamed by a Spotify Premium listener or a free tier listener, and the total streaming revenue that month.

How Much Does Spotify Pay Per 1000 Streams?

On average Spotify pays artists $3-4 for 1000 streams. This is calculated based on the average payout per stream $0.003.

How Much Does Spotify Pay for a Million Streams?

On average Spotify pays artists $3000 for a million streams. This is calculated based on the average payout per stream $0.003. But, how much you get paid can fluctuate between $0.001 – $0.008 per stream, depending on factors like length of stream, country of stream & paid vs free users.

You can also use a Spotify stream calculator to work how much Spotify (and other streaming platforms) pay for a certain number of streams.

How Many Streams Does It Take to Make $1?

With the average Spotify per-stream payout it would take roughly 334 streams to make $1. This calculation is based on the average payout per stream of $0.003. $1 is divided by the average payment amount ($0.003), and you get 334 streams.

How Does Spotify Calculate Streaming Royalties? 

This means Spotify does not pay you for your personal streams but gives you a percentage of total monthly streams divided among artists depending on the percentage of streams they contributed. 

So, if Post Malone accounted for 10% of all streams on Spotify, the rights holders of his music will get 10% of the total revenue from streams. This means that, as a listener, your subscription fee is split between all the artists streamed on Spotify – regardless of whether you listen to them.

While this system benefits some artists – as money is divided equally between all artists based on percentages – there is a bias towards major artists. If an artist has a small and devoted following, some would argue that a larger proportion of their fan’s subscription should go to their favorite artists instead of to an artist they have no interest in – and who has a large following already.

What Affects Your Spotify Royalty Rates?

Not all streams are equal.

The main factor is the region or country that the stream is coming from. For example, a Spotify Premium subscription costs $1.60 a month in India and $15.65 in Denmark. This means that your streaming payouts would be much higher if you had a million streams in Denmark than a million streams in India – because Spotify make a larger subscription revenue in Denmark. This means that the stream share is divided between a larger total quantity of streaming revenue.

The same thing goes for advertising. Free tier listeners on Spotify are given limited features and are bombarded with adverts. Spotify gets its free tier revenue from advertisers and since advertisers are more likely to focus their ads on a market with the most potential customers, poorer countries end up contributing less to the overall pool of royalties.

A Spotify Premium user’s stream is more valuable than a stream from ad-supported users. Historically, Spotify has generated more from their premium user subscriptions than they have from advertisements. 

If your audience consists of mostly premium users, you’ll get paid more than if your audience was mostly free users.

If you want your income to reach its full potential, get all of your listeners subscribed to Spotify.

Because the number of paid users fluctuates, and the subscription price and advertising revenue constantly change, the amount artists get paid varies all the time. This means that even if your quantity of streams goes down, you might be paid the same if the overall number of streams increases by the same amount. Or you may be paid less if your streams increase but by less than the overall number. The way Spotify calculates per stream rates isn’t necessarily reflective of how many streams an artist is getting but how Spotify’s market is performing.

Essentially, the more money there is to go around, the better rates for pay-outs you’ll get.

How Does Spotify Split the Pay Between Rights Holders & Artists?

This depends on the deal between the artist and the rights holder.

If you are an independent artist, then the money is shared between you and the distributor based on whatever agreement you came to.

Certain digital distributors split this money differently. Distrokid for example request a subscription fee but allows the artist to keep 100% of streaming royalties – this means that your streaming revenue gets paid to you from Spotify (after they have taken their cut) through Distrokid. If you are signed to a record label, then this percentage depends on the deal between the artist and the recording owners.

Basically, Spotify takes a cut, then pays the rights holders.

To put this in context, if you’re an artist signed to a major label:

• The total revenue generated for a million streams is $4,500
• This means that Spotify takes $1,500 (a third)
• The rights holder (your label) then gets the remaining $3,000 (two thirds)
• Then depending on your record contract (the average major label splits royalties 80/20) label gives you $600.

Some artists may earn more or less depending on their record deal. While major labels generally share 20% of streaming royalties with artists, Indie labels have a better reputation for offering pro-artist contracts, often with larger royalty percentages for the musician. There are also many artists who are finding success without a record deal. Independent artists keep all of their song rights and give a small share of their royalties to a distributor – or keep 100% and pay the distributor a set fee.

Which Music Streaming Service Pays the Most Per Stream?

Napster pays artists the highest per stream, their average per-stream payout is $0.0168.

Compared to the other major streaming services Spotify is not the best-paying music streaming platform per stream.

Spotify comes somewhere in the middle of this list behind Napster, Tidal, Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music, and Deezer, but ahead of streaming platforms like YouTube Music and Pandora.

Here’s a table of the average payout per stream of each streaming platform:

Streaming Service	Payout Per Stream in 2022 ($)
Napster	0.01682
Tidal	0.01284
Amazon Unlimited	0.01175
Apple Music	0.01
Deezer	0.0064
Google Play	0.00543
Amazon Digital Services	0.00402
Spotify	0.0037
Pandora	0.00133
YouTube	0.00069
Others (Yandex, Peloton, iHeartRadio etc)	0.012663

Who Has the Most Paid Subscriptions?

Spotify has the most paid subscribers with 180 million and the largest market share with 48.3%.

Their closest competitor is Apple Music with 24.97%. While Spotify does not pay the most, they have the largest reach of listeners by a huge margin. This means that while you may get less money per stream on Spotify, you’re more likely to get more streams.

While Apple Music has only 78 million paid subscribers compared to Spotify’s 180 million – Apple’s numbers have been increasing and they now have more subscribers than Spotify in the United States. 

Tidal currently has 3 million subscribers which is the least of all the major streaming services. However, there are claims that Tidal has persistently inflated its subscriber numbers in statements to the media, the public, and investors. So, while Tidal has a large streaming payout, it does not necessarily reflect the number of streams.

Here’s a table showing the amount of paid subscriptions each streaming platform has:

Streaming Service	Total Paid Subscriptions	Market Share (%)
Spotify	180 million	48.3
Apple Music	98 million	24.97
Amazon Unlimited Music	55 million	4.04
YouTube Music	50 million	6.99
Deezer	16 million	2.6
Pandora	6.5 million	3.03
Napster	5 million	0.8
Tidal	3 million	0.98

Spotify’s Revenue Has Increased but Payout Per Stream Has Decreased Over Time

As of 2020, Spotify has paid over $23 billion in royalties to rights holders – including over $5 billion in 2020 alone, up from $3.3 billion in 2017, but their streaming payouts per stream have decreased from 0.0057 in 2011 to 0.003 in 2022. Despite not yet making a profit, Spotify’s revenue has been increasing and they have been getting closer to making a profit each year. 

Spotify Hasn’t Turned A Profit Since its Beginning

Spotify hasn’t made any money from the music streaming market. This may account for the low payout per stream, and with time it could improve. The per-stream payout may increase once profits are up but based on the current trends it doesn’t look like it.

This could be a result of the democratisation of music distribution and creation. This means that it is easier now more than ever for an artist to make their own music and put it on music streaming platforms. As a result of this revenues have to be shared across an ever-larger number of artists and tracks (independent artists released 8.5 times more music in 2020 than major labels).

The more successful artists are, the smaller the average amount of streaming income per artist and songwriter.

Can Artists Earn A Living from Music Streaming Platforms Like Spotify?

This is particularly the case with ambient and instrumental music due to the Spotify playlisting algorithms. Playlisting has led to huge numbers of users listening to music passively in the background while they do other activities. Instead of engaging directly with an artist, users stream ‘mood’ and ‘vibe’ playlists, which leads to a large streaming payout for artists in these genres.

Most artists can’t survive on streaming alone. For example, if an artist gains 20,000 streams, it’s a figure they should be proud of. However, this only equates to $60, enough for a tank of petrol to get them to their next gig. Now more than ever, with the increasing number of artists using the platform, it is harder to make a living wage from Spotify.

Many artists earn most of their money through live performances, merch, and sales of exclusive physical copies of their music. For example, many artists are releasing their albums in multiple different formats (cassette, vinyl, CD) as well as in different versions (deluxe editions, acoustic versions, and remix albums) in order to maximise engagement and revenue for one specific release.

How Many Streams Does it Take To Earn Minimum Wage?

This depends on the streaming service you upload your music to. On a platform like Napster, you will need fewer streams because their payout per stream is bigger. However, on something like YouTube, you will need a lot more due to the low payout per stream.

These calculations have been worked out using the $0.003 average payout per stream value and the US minimum wage, which is $15,080/year.

Here’s a table of the number of streams you need on each platform to earn minimum wage in the US:

Streaming Service	Amount of Streams Per Year
Napster	896.6K
Tidal	1.2M
Amazon Music Unlimited	1.3M
Apple Music	1.5M
Deezer	2.4M
Spotify	4.1M
Pandora	11.6M
YouTube	21.9M

Who Are the Highest Earning Artists on Spotify?

Drake is the all-time highest earning artist on Spotify, earning over $133.2m just from his catalogue of music. Ed Sheeran comes in 2nd, with $100.5m earned from his entire collection of music, and Bad Bunny just below him, with $94.2m earned from streaming royalties.

The values below have been calculated using the total number of streams for each artist (since Spotify started), using the assumption that they have a 50/50 label deal, the average payout per stream of $0.003 and the fact that Spotify takes a 1/3rd of all revenue generated.

Here’s a list of the highest-earning artists on Spotify:

Artist	Amount of Streams	Artist Made ($)
Drake	44.4B	18.6M
Ed Sheeran	33.5B	14.1M
Bad Bunny	31.4B	94.2M
Arianna Grande	29.2B	87.6M
The Weeknd	29.0B	87.0M
Justin Bieber	28.1B	84.3M
Post Malone	26.7B	80.1M
Eminem	26.5B	79.5M
Taylor Swift	25.9B	77.7M
BTS	23.2B	69.6M

Which is the Best Music Streaming Service?

The highest paying major streaming services may not be the best because they do not have a large market share and therefore lack the same opportunity to get as many followers and streams.

Napster or Tidal may be the highest paid, but the number of streams you’ll get on those services will be minimal and you’ll probably make less money overall. The same is true for Apple Music. It pays more, but Spotify has a much larger subscriber count and market share.

I personally get a fraction of the streams on Apple Music than I do on Spotify. So, although they don’t pay as well, they’re best for me in terms of getting fans and getting a consistent income. An important part of this is Spotify’s playlisting and artist discovery algorithms, which massively increase my exposure to new audiences. It works for both audiences and artists – they discover new artists and artists gain new listeners.

Apple Music Introduce A New Cent Per Stream Model

Apple Music is the biggest contender to Spotify and is slowly creeping up on them.

Apple Music has plans to implement a cent per stream and this represents a larger change in the music industry. The UK government have been debating the issues of low royalty payments for artists and Apple have responded to this wider debate by saying they ‘believe in paying every creator the same rate, that a play has a value’. Apple Music now pays double what Spotify does per stream on average and 52% of their subscription revenue is paid to record labels.

Apple Music has grown hugely each year since its beginning – from 11 million members in 2015 to 98 million in 2021 and industry forecasts suggest that Apple music will continue to grow at this rate, with some suggesting that it may eventually take over. This is mainly due to their domination of the phone market and the fact that most people now listen to music through their phones.

With the rapid development in the streaming sector and its continual growth, we can see that nothing stays still for very long. While Spotify has always been the king this could easily switch in Apple’s favour.

Summary

We’ve covered everything you need to know about Spotify streaming royalties. From how much you get paid, and all the factors that determine this figure, to how this is changing between different streaming platforms. The music streaming platform industry is constantly growing and changing, and the market may switch in the future. You can expect us to keep updating the article as it does.