Which Streaming Service Pays Artists The Most – The greatest musicians in the world are rarely for money. Touring cars, broken guitar strings and studio time don’t come for free, though, so it definitely pays to monetize music in some way.
Today, most of a modern musician’s income comes from paid gigs, merchandise sales and streaming royalties. While CDs, tapes and vinyl are things of the past (except for the collectors out there), in 2022, most people listen to their music through a few online streaming platforms.
Which Streaming Service Pays Artists The Most
Since many streaming services are cheap and even free, this leaves many music lovers wondering how much the artists they listen to make every time one of their songs is streamed.
Streaming Is Keeping More Money From Artists (and Paying Them More)
To answer this question and more, we’ve put together this article that covers everything you need to know about music streaming royalties and payments in 2022.
As we said, music streaming is still growing. In 2021, Statista reported that the number of users of streaming services reached 487 million, a significant increase from 7.9 million in 2014.
In the US alone, revenue from streaming services reached $4.6 billion in 2021 and 82.1 million Americans subscribed to music streaming platforms.
Feel free to use our free Streaming Payment Calculator. Just enter the number of streams and the calculator will give you a breakdown and estimate of how much an artist can earn through royalties.
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Pay attention to this! If your next song reaches 10,000 plays on Spotify, you’ll get about $40 in streaming fees. Although this number is accurate, calculating the exact payout from different systems can be very difficult. This is largely because:
According to Statista.com, Spotify was the most popular streaming platform with 32% of streaming service users. Apple Music took second place with 16% market share.
The same report noted that Amazon brings in 13% of attractive users, while Google follows with 8%. What is known here is that SoundCloud is one of the fastest growing platforms, doubling the number of monthly users from previous years.
While Apple, Spotify, Pandora, and SoundCloud are only used for audio streaming, YouTube (and YouTube Premium) is very popular for streaming music videos, songs, podcasts, and more. Incredibly, YouTube can attract nearly 2 billion users each month who listen to music, watch television, or rabbit holes down watching video on obscure topics.
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For more information on the current streaming landscape, we will now go into detail about the ins and outs of each of these streaming platforms.
Finally, Amazon Music is a digital music streaming service that comes from an organization that has its toes in almost every industry. Amazon Music is steadily gaining users, as the company has 55 million monthly users worldwide in 2020.
To make things confusing, Amazon music offers 5 different levels of listening options. This includes an unlimited version, a high-definition audio version, as well as individual and family plans. Amazon Prime members are also entitled to the premium version of Amazon Music.
On average, Amazon Music provides approximately $0.00402 per stream on the platform to record owners. At about a full penny, this is one of the highest paid music streaming services in the world.
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On the other side of the world, Sweden’s Spotify is another giant in the music streaming space. Spotify offers a free and premium service that can be used to listen to music on desktop and mobile devices. The free version has ads between groups of songs, while Spotify Premium has no ads at all.
Historically, Spotify has charged some of the lowest royalties in the industry. In fact, on several occasions, artists have banned it all together claiming that platforms like Spotify do not pay enough. To stay in business, the streaming service has improved to increase performance fees for musicians and comedians.
Today, Spotify pays between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream depending on the location of the listener, the popularity of the song, the length of the song and a few other factors. In many ways, the ever-changing payout figure seems perfectly designed to confuse users who may be underpaid for their royalty rates.
Like Apple, Spotify also shares a percentage of its advertising revenue with its popular streaming artists. The platform has also recently made headlines for paying independent producers like Joe Rogan large sums of money in exchange for exclusive streaming rights.
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Ah – the company that revolutionized the way we listen to music with the invention of the iPod: Apple Music. Today, many Apple Music users stream their favorite songs from the Apple Music App on iPhones, iPads, and MacBook computers.
Users can get started with Apple Music with a free 3-month trial. After that, the service costs $10 per month for individual users, $5 per month for students, and $15 per month for families of up to six people.
Interestingly, in 2021 Apple released a ‘voice only’ version of Apple Music for $5 per month that is only compatible with Siri, meaning you have to control it with your voice through an Apple device.
Although the number is constantly changing, in 2022 Apple Music pays 0.00783 per stream on its platform. With this in mind, a song will earn $1 after about 128 streams.
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In addition, Apple Music also has a pro-rata system that distributes a large percentage of its advertising revenue to streaming artists. However, these bonus payments are usually pennies on the dollar for most artists, as the income is split among all the musicians on the platform. A huge amount of money will be made only through promotions of artists like Drake and Taylor Swift whose songs are streamed a million times every month.
For every dollar earned on Apple Music, artists earn an average of 58 cents. The remaining balance is divided between Apple’s commission (28.5 cents), and production, mechanical and performance rights (13.5 cents).
For years, Pandora was a name synonymous with Internet radio. The platform allows users to customize their virtual radio stations based on songs, artists, genres and more.
Pandora is completely free to use, however ad-free streaming and on-demand music libraries can be had for $4.99 and $9.99 per month respectively. Pandora can be used in a browser or an app.
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Although it is the sixth largest music streaming platform, Pandora lags far behind other streaming services when it comes to paying artists. In 2022, musicians earned only 0.00133 per stream on Pandora. Compared to services like Spotify and Apple Music, Pandora costs less than half as much as some of its competitors.
At this rate, songs on Pandora need to get about 752 streams to earn one dollar on the platform. Compared to other industry leaders, this is one of the lowest royalty rates.
Let’s take a look at Tidal, a service dedicated to high-quality rap, hip-hop and R&B. Founded by Jay-Z and supported by many independent musicians, Tidal is one of the newest music streaming services, which is offered at different payment levels.
Currently, Tidal offers a one-month free trial and a fee of $10/month for basic service and a fee of $20/month for high-quality streaming audio.
Understanding How Streaming Services Pay
As an artist-focused streaming service, Tidal has one of the highest royalty rates in the music industry. Tidal pays almost 3 times more than other premium audio streaming services, paying around $0.01284 per stream.
It’s worth noting that Tidal has also had its fair share of controversies, so it may not be the most reliable platform for artists who want to pay for streaming services.
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Although it may be unknown to many music lovers in the world, Deezer is a French streaming platform that is very popular in certain circles. The company owns rights to a growing library of more than 73 million songs, which is accessed by 16 million monthly users (half of them are paid members).
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On Deezer’s website, the company stated that they “want artists to be paid fairly,” with their unique user-centric payment system. Deezer’s current model allows paid subscribers to directly support their favorite musicians. If a Deezer user only listens to one artist per month, that artist will receive the user’s entire subscription, minus the fees charged on the platform.
While this is a pretty cool trend, Deezer’s average payout per stream is still only around $0.0011, which is on the low end of the streaming service payout spectrum. However, with the right adjustments, Deezer’s model has the potential to change the way streaming services pay artists.
Speaking of YouTube, the Google-owned company is now pushing people to enjoy streaming music on YouTube Music and YouTube Premium streaming services. YouTube Music is free to use, while users can upgrade to Premium to enjoy an ad-free experience.
It is more difficult to calculate the average royalties paid to musicians on YouTube, as the platform also offers videos and a variety of streaming options. Artists are reported to make a minimum of $0.00069
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