For musicians, learning the streaming rates of each platform is vital to their marketing strategy. With streaming revenue surpassing downloading, the game has changed. So the real question is how much do artists earn from streaming?
Each platform will have their own rates, and each territory/region the stream is coming from will pay differently. Some streaming services offer a two-tier system where paid accounts generate much more than ad-supported free accounts. With rates fluctuating month to month, you must look at the yearly average for each streaming platform. Here’s what each platform pays in USD:
- Groove Music (RIP)
Revenue/1000 streams = $27.30
Microsoft Groove (AKA Xbox Music) shut down at the end of 2017, offering users a two month trial with Spotify. This is most likely due to having the smallest streaming market share at 0.65%. Regardless, the platform paid artists a whopping $0.0273 per stream.
- Napster
Revenue/1000 streams = $16.82
Running far behind with the second place trophy is Napster (AKA Rhapsody) which pays artists $0.01682 per stream with 1.75% of the market share. Napster does not have a free option, so royalties come directly from 70% of subscription revenue the platform earns.
- Tidal
Revenue/1000 streams = $12.84
After experiencing many financial issues over the last year, Tidal is still hanging on. The Jay-Z owned platform claims to cater to the emerging artist with higher payouts than Spotify at $0.01248 per stream at 1.76% of the market share. However, Tidal has come under scrutiny for being late on payments to artists and being accused of inflating stream counts on exclusive releases.
- Apple Music
Revenue/1000 streams = $7.83
Converting trial users into paid accounts is 3.5x more successful at Apple Music than Spotify. This results in higher stream royalties than last year at $0.0064 per stream, with a bigger market share at 22.29%. We are expecting more growth with Apple Music and hopefully higher royalty payouts.
- Amazon
Revenue/1000 streams = $7.40
At 30 million combined subscribers with Amazon Prime Music and Music Unlimited, Amazon is proving itself a contender in the streaming world. Currently, the retail giant sits at 3.90% of the market share paying artists $0.0074.
- Deezer
Revenue/1000 streams = $6.24
Although not as popular in North America, Deezer still has a 3.24% market share in the United States. The French platform currently pays $0.00624 per stream with more possible growth in North America.
- Google Play
Revenue/1000 streams = $6.11
What happened to you, Google Play? The search engine giant was once the top paying streaming platform, is now paying 3x less than what it used to at $0.0059 per stream with a 4% market share. Ouch.
8 Spotify
Revenue/1000 streams = $3.97
The biggest streaming platform with over half the market share (51.51%) is still paying artists significantly lower royalty rates than most of the others. For context, Napster is paying 4.2x higher than Spotify.
- Pandora
Revenue/1000 streams = $1.34
You gotta hand it to Pandora for not giving up! The struggling platform pays a mere $0.00134 per stream, despite having a decent 7.86% of the market share. If we see you on this list next year, we hope the royalty rates are higher, Pandora.
- YouTube
Revenue/1000 streams = $0.60
C’mon, you don’t really expect to make money on YouTube. Despite ads coming in more frequently than any other platform, they pay their artists $0.0006 per stream. Despite the massive user count of the site, it only has a 1.70% market share in the US. Very strange.
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