Spotify gains access to catalogs of millions of songs using two types of licenses, (1) sound recording license agreements and (2) musical composition license agreements. Sound recording license agreements cover the rights to the recording of the song itself.
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.
Artists don't get paid by Spotify directly. Spotify pays the artists through distribution services, record labels, publishers etc. These services then pay the artists. The only way to get your music on Spotify is through the before mentioned parties.
In the case of Spotify, the amount you can expect to receive lies between $0.003 to $0.005 per stream. That's roughly equivalent to a 70/30 split between the rights holders with 70% and the platform with 30%.
Instead of paying artists directly, Spotify pays rights holders—record labels, distributors or others—who artists allow to put their music on the platform, and who in turn pay the artists with the money earned on the streaming service.
Spotify generally pays between US$.003 (NZ$0.0049) and US$.005 per stream, according to Business Insider. That means it can take more than 300 streams to earn just US$1, while 1 billion streams can equal between US$3 million and US$5 million in royalties.
The average price per stream is $0.004. $4 for every 1,000 streams. $4000 for each million streams.
As mentioned, each platform pays differently and has different factors that come into play to determine your stream's total payout. 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.
You will make anywhere between $2 and $4 for 1000 streams on Spotify. The average pay-out per stream on Spotify is $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.
But you can't pitch your own songs directly to signed artists without a publisher or relationship. You can't send unsolicited recordings to established artists for example, or give your CD to a sound person at a concert and ask them to send it on (I've seen it happen.) Most artists have strict policies against that.
Start with a smaller artist, understand how the business works and where your market is. There's no point pitching a folk song to a rock artist, it just won't translate to their audience. You need to know who your clients are and tailor your music and pitches to these individuals.
According to Business Insider, Spotify pays artists and rights-holders on average between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream. However, this is a gross oversimplification of the way Spotify royalties actually work. Let's look at why focusing on Spotify's pay-per-stream numbers isn't going to give you an exact answer.
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.
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.
The current payout averages on Spotify are $. 0037 for ad-supported streams, and $. 006 for “paid” subscription streams (premium streams). So, for 50 million yearly plays, that's the equivalent of $185,000 and $300,000 respectively.
To make more money from Spotify, you need to get more streams from your listeners. You will get paid for each time your music is listened to for 30 seconds, otherwise the stream won't count.
Since royalties are not static, an artist will receive between $ 140 and $ 800 in royalties for 100,000 streams on Spotify. On average, this amount of streams usually brings the author $ 400-700.
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.
As of July 2023, a total of 454 songs have surpassed one billion streams on Spotify, 38 have surpassed two billion, and just 2 have surpassed three billion in the platform's history.
Contrary to what you might have heard, Spotify does not pay artist royalties according to a per-play or per-stream rate; the royalty payments that artists receive might vary according to differences in how their music is streamed or the agreements they have with labels or distributors.
A number of online Spotify royalties calculators, including Streaming Calculator, Streaming Royalty Calculator, Music Fibre and Music Gateway, have estimated Rosenthal's earnings to land somewhere between $3,400,000 and $4,500,000.
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.