Comments on: How Much Artists Make Per Stream on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube, Pandora, More

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 31 May 2020 10:03:56 +0000

In reply to Sj.

I believe you…

By: Rob

Rob — Sun, 31 May 2020 10:00:55 +0000

It also depends on Pandora what format you are streamed on as to what rate you get. I consistently get over 10,000 spins per month and I have gotten as many as 18k in a month but never made $40.00 from that one source. Everybody just seems to pay what they want to pay per stream anyway…What can you do about it..NOTHING!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Feb 2020 10:31:19 +0000

In reply to J.

I left Ditto is unacceptable to ignore the request to remove an album from stores.

By: DerpySnake

DerpySnake — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 10:18:11 +0000

There’s a lot of shady comments here. Is anyone gonna delete them?

By: Teresa

Teresa — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 06:35:39 +0000

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By: Samual

Samual — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 06:34:29 +0000

To get Spotify music for free without subscription, you can use DRmare Spotify Music Downloader. It gives you back common audio files so that you can save the music on your device for offline playing. Get more detail at the DRmare Xmas Promotion Website.

By: No name

No name — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 22:01:52 +0000

Not accurate. For Napster I see in my stats $0.0082/stream and $0.0091/stream, under what you mention here. And they pay with a 9-11 months delay!

By: Smooth Mistic Mike

Smooth Mistic Mike — Sun, 01 Dec 2019 23:12:58 +0000

In reply to Anonymous.

Smooth Mistic Mike “Elsie’s Music” is available on most streaming & download platforms…

By: Mike Twiss

Mike Twiss — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 08:22:46 +0000

In reply to J.

Because the artists are being lied to and cheated out of millions of dollars in revenue and there is no real oversight to prevent this.

By: Mike Twiss

Mike Twiss — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 08:20:21 +0000

In reply to Harris W..

That site doesn’t even exist. That’s what happens when you pay out more than you take in

By: MLVX

MLVX — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 12:45:09 +0000

Oooooooh my account Spotify MLVX is crazy ! Go listen now !

I WANT MONEY

By: itchy

itchy — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 21:51:22 +0000

In reply to Harris W..

how much they pay to let them bot on your account?

By: Ronak Raval (RAME)

Ronak Raval (RAME) — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 03:47:26 +0000

All this opaqueness in the industry! Well-raised issues by Jeff Price in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2HROI7KpPM

Its a pity that artists still are at the mercy of these streaming services and major global labels are still trying to manipulate the industry!

We need a better world!

By: Ronak Raval

Ronak Raval — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 03:43:03 +0000

In reply to Anonymous.

Ditto advertises as not taking a cut from payouts, same with DistroKid. Are they lying? Or is the data wrong or differs on per-case basis?

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 20:06:38 +0000

In reply to Sj.

word

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 20:02:33 +0000

The intro has a catastrophic error:

“We found Pandora had the highest per-play royalty rate. At $0.01682 per play, an independent artist would need around 87,515 plays to earn the US monthly minimum wage of $1,472.”

Pandora is the second worst in the list! You meant Napster

By: Bennie Guardell

Bennie Guardell — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 05:29:05 +0000

Costs then more to send the check than what you get paid ! …

By: Leon Rosen

Leon Rosen — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 16:11:36 +0000

Im confused by the comments on Pandora which seem to be contradictory. Above you wrote they paid the highest last year. But below you write they paid among the lowest last year. As well as this year. Which is it?

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 23:13:33 +0000

Definitely don’t use the most active media platform of all time to build your career! WTF is up with that last line?

By: Chilla Tokage

Chilla Tokage — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 23:26:52 +0000

In reply to S Reignite.

lmao you’ll get a million plays in a month on sC with a Buffalo Wild Wings commercial playing for like 300,000 people and get a check for $0.40 don’t @ me .. this is mad interesting tho lmao

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 17:22:09 +0000

Where does Livexlive (formerly Slacker) fall in all of this?

By: L Double A on SPOTIFY

L Double A on SPOTIFY — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 19:33:22 +0000

In reply to JP.

Not really accurate. I’m in different stores or apps and the payout is lower. I just added Napster a little while ago, so I’ll know more at the end of the month

By: Dub

Dub — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 19:30:43 +0000

I don’t know how much that is, what you said. But I personally only get 0.00235 USD on average per stream, when it comes to Spotify

By: tanitani

tanitani — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 15:53:05 +0000

In reply to Sj.

Sj — The Spotify US office is at 4 World Trade Center, 150 Greenwich Street, 62nd Floor, New York, NY 10007, one of the most expensive real estates.
Thank you for your work and also your comment.

By: Jussi Torres

Jussi Torres — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 23:38:42 +0000

Soundcloud?

By: Anon

Anon — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 17:00:46 +0000

This, of course, doesn’t take into account how popular each of these platforms is. Just as an example, YouTube may have the lowest pay rates, but it is still used significantly more than Napster is. As a result, it may be that artists earn more money from YouTube than they do from Napster simply because of the amount of users.

By: Himi

Himi — Sun, 04 Aug 2019 16:40:52 +0000

In reply to Anno.

I was wondering… also, omitted

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Aug 2019 03:21:15 +0000

In reply to Independent Artist.

I noticed this too! If you read further it shows pandora as one of the worst ones! I think it was a typo. They say at the top “Pandora” but I think they meant to say “Napster”. If you read right after, the numbers matching what they said was “Pandora” was really Napster. Big typo mistake

By: CHEVY 111111

CHEVY 111111 — Sun, 21 Jul 2019 03:01:57 +0000

In reply to JP.

Right.

By: JP

JP — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 09:05:03 +0000

How accurate is this? I have seen about several different things on how much YouTube pays so im skeptical.

By: S Reignite

S Reignite — Sun, 30 Jun 2019 23:37:01 +0000

Can you add Soundcloud to this considering there is Soundcloud Go?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 17:17:48 +0000

This needs more detail to be useful. These are US rates? These are for the master only? These rates seems to be what’s paid to the label so keep in mind what the artist gets depends on the deal between them and their label. The “artist” is not the writer – the publishing side of royalties don’t seem to be mentioned here. When auditing statements and throwing out rates you personally have received, it should be stated what you are citing: artist royalties (from label/master), or public performance (PRO), or songwriting royalties (from publisher). And your share of the song must be taken into account. Assumption is the rates above are all based on 100% ownership.

By: Harris W.

Harris W. — Fri, 24 May 2019 19:59:12 +0000

In reply to JP CMP.

you tube pays $0.000064 a stream you need 2 million a month to make $1400, try iNTunes distribution they pay for sales not streams .. they pay up to 93% of sales! https://www.in-tune.live/in-music-distribution

By: Trevor Lowe

Trevor Lowe — Fri, 24 May 2019 10:33:48 +0000

just wondering if partial plays still pays.. I know that with Australian TV play outs if you use less than 15secs then you don’t have to pay royalties..

so if I just play 16secs of a song does that automatically constitute a “play”?

By: Sj

Sj — Wed, 15 May 2019 00:14:38 +0000

The CEOs claim they’re not making money but Spotify was boasting about 100 million subscribers paying 15.00 monthly and buying 50 million dollar homes. So where’s that money coming from? Tidal hasn’t paid in 2 years. Apple hasn’t paid in 1 year and we have over 50 million streams with them. Everyone should take their music down until the get paid or bankrupt them. They’re laughing at everyone to the bank and people are fearful of losing numbers they’re never gonna get paid for anyway. Pure illegal corruption and no protection whatsoever for Indie labels and artists. Everyone is in their pockets. We must start downloading directly from the sites or the music industry is going to be destroyed permanently.

By: Sj

Sj — Wed, 15 May 2019 00:07:09 +0000

We streamed over 150 million and Ingrooves sends us between 35.00 to 55.00 a month. The distributor doesn’t respond when you try to find out anything and there’s no one to contact when they don’t pay. We’re an established lable who’s spent well over 1 million in artists, videos, promotional and distribution, ads, digital, publicist ect. You want to know what we’ve uncovered hit us up. But basically they’re using our music making billions and not paying us. Bottom line is the music streaming industry is extremely corrupt and destroying the arts. In 4 yrs no money.

By: Independent Artist

Independent Artist — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 13:41:26 +0000

If streaming services actually paid so much, then I would be a rich man, ha ha ha! I agree with others that these rates are completely useless, because each music store uses a lot of different rates for a single stream, depending on the service (different subscriptions) that the customer chooses… So rates can vary a lot within one streaming service.
I distribute my recordings via TuneCore and thanks to detailed reports I know how different rates are, for example, in US Amazon, depending on the service offered (Amazon Unlimited, Amazon Cloud, Amazon Premium) these rates also differ within one service, depending on the service subscription plan. For example, Amazon Unlimited has 9 different rates (Example for January 2019 for one from my tracks: $0.0048, $0.0056, $0.0068, $0.0074, $0.0078, $0.0098, $0.0123, $0.0125, $0.0150), but (!) they change every month, because the rate paid to the artist depends on the percentage share of his streams in all of the recordings (all streams all artists) offered by Amazon (sic!).

In February 2019 I had 112,353 streams in Amazon Unlimited and I received $1,351.77 (average $0.012 per stream), and also 103,792 streams in Amazon Cloud and I received $414.31 (average $0.0039 per stream).

So understanding and individual calculation of how much streaming services really pays the artist – is simply impossible …

BTW: Pandora does not pay $0.01682 per stream – in February 2019 I had 15,783 streams and I received only $ 41.15, so it’s $0.00259 per stream, not $0.01682! :(

By: Aguilorius

Aguilorius — Thu, 18 Apr 2019 09:42:03 +0000

I agree with your Thomas B. comment. This kind of approach is quite useless if it is unable to state the payment amounts by rights owner, I mean, how much goes to record labels (no matter major or indie or self production ) , and how much to writers. Stating this simple two concepts should be easy to infer the amounts involved on all possible situations: singersongwriter signed by a major company, artist signed by a major who sings songs from other writers, artista/writer self produced and so on. This kind of approach should provide more accurate info to creators relating the wide range of situations and choices that we have to face in nowadays music industry. Nevertheless, I sincerely thank the effort of DMN for providing updated numbers every year.

By: deepfreeze

deepfreeze — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 22:55:02 +0000

In reply to Anno.

High you say….and what is considered to be high?

By: Thomas B.

Thomas B. — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 20:54:35 +0000

This data seems completely useless, because it is doesn’t tell, through which channels theses payout go through. Are those royalties from collection societies or are those the combined sum of those and those from record labels which they pay to the artists per stream. Also how much money are paid to the record labels per stream. The German music industry just announced that music streaming was able to compensate for decreasing CD sales in Germany. W/o these information these are just pretty numbers with no real world implications.

It also should be pointed out, that the ad supported service Spotify (and also YouTube) offers was important to finally tackle the issue with illegal streaming and downloads. So, it might not be much but it is a lot more than 0. This shouldn’t be forgotten by the people who complain about low payout rates. It would also be interesting how the payouts for ad supported and paid streams differ.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 03 Mar 2019 00:32:03 +0000

In reply to J.

They might be allowing for fluctuations PLUS it is also likely that your aggregator is several steps removed from the direct payout (ie with each ‘step’ taking a slice of pie before it gets to them and you)

By: JP CMP

JP CMP — Mon, 11 Feb 2019 02:24:51 +0000

In reply to Anonymous.

What about youtube?

By: EL 'o' EL

EL 'o' EL — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 04:30:21 +0000

Useful data, thank you.

By: J

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 10:55:13 +0000

This is interesting data. When I asked Ditto, the aggregator I use, they said Spotify pay out approximately £0.0008 per play. This is approximately 4-5 times less than the numbers you’re suggesting in this article.
Why is it almost impossible for artists to find accurate data on this?

By: Ryan W.

Ryan W. — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 22:49:34 +0000

What about the publishers?

By: Evan W.

Evan W. — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 01:05:09 +0000

why do you write in article, ” It remains unclear how much (company name) loses each year as well as per user.

By: Jefferson

Jefferson — Wed, 26 Dec 2018 18:19:00 +0000

Include AM/FM/satellite radio in the chart, expressing their payments by mode of delivery (terrestrial transmitter, satellite, internet/webcast, etc).

By: Anno

Anno — Wed, 26 Dec 2018 17:41:05 +0000

Meaningless data. The per play rate is always a function of how much money each brand made for the period, divided by total plays. So the real levers are revenue / usage. If usage is low, per play rate can be high. So the per play rate must always be viewed with context, which you emitted.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Dec 2018 07:53:05 +0000

Infographic doesn’t look right. Napster has an extra 0? Should be 0.019