Planning to skyrocket your career through Spotify? Then we have got you covered with the most asked question ‘How much does Spotify pay per stream?’ There are a lot of factors that are considered before deciding on the per-stream rate. Building a career in the music industry is challenging but fun too.
There are a lot of platforms out there that can boost your music career and Spotify is one of the best. Spotify is the kind of music platform where you will find millions of tracks by the best artists from all over the world. Though there’s competition but once you build your community it gets easier and more exciting.
But does Spotify pay you what you deserve? Well, the music platform gave an estimate recently that around 28% of artists earned over $10,000 from Spotify by uploading their tracks. Now that’s quite surprising that new artists can make their career here. But it’s not easy. Let’s get into the details of how much Spotify is paying per stream.
How Much Does Spotify Pay Per Stream?
Spotify is helping professional musicians to make a living. You will find a lot of people saying that Spotify is paying around $0.003 – $0.005 on average. By this payment it can be determined that approximately 70% revenue is being paid to the artists and the rest of it the platform makes. But that also depends upon various factors.
Let’s have a real talk. It’s nearly challenging to determine how much you can earn per stream based on your tracks. Don’t get caught up in the precise calculations. This music platform is not paying artists per stream but instead, it is determining the price based on ‘streamshare’. Now streamshare is a payment method used by Spotify that could vary depending upon agreements with the licensors or how the music is streamed.
Spotify also explained the process of streamshare by penning, “We calculate Streamshare by tallying the total number of streams in a given month and determining what proportion of those streams were people listening to music owned or controlled by a particular rightsholder.”
Plus, you need to have a great amount of streams to earn an average income from Spotify. Once you have achieved that then it will be easier for you to earn a great income through it. In short, you get paid depending on your location, and your distribution contract with Spotify.
Factors That Determine Your ‘Streamshare’ Revenue On Spotify
Along with the country you reside in there are other important factors that determine your revenue on Spotify. By looking at these factors you will at least have an estimate on what to expect ahead.
1. Your Streamers Country
One of the main factors that can contribute to determining your Spotify revenue is your listener’s country. Spotify has a revenue plan in place and determines your streamshare revenue based on your listener’s country. If your listeners are from India and USA the revenue might differ in both places and you will get the payment according to the calculation.
2. The Spotify Plan Your Listeners Use
There are multiple Spotify plans available. The plans are Free Basic Plan, Individual Premium, Duo Premiere, Family Premium, and Student Premium. A free plan might generate slightly less revenue compared to a premium plan. Your Spotify listeners might be using any of these plans and then the calculation is based on that.
3. Your Distribution Network
Another important factor that determines your Spotify revenue is the distributor you have a contract with. The music industry doesn’t pay royalties based on the contract between Spotify and artists. The royalties that you will receive are based on your contract with your distributor. Even the distributor might take a chunk from your royalties.
You should also know that Spotify requests two different royalties. The first one is ‘sound recording’ royalties and the second is ‘publishing’ or ‘music publisher’ royalties. The rate for both royalties differs from one another based on different calculations.
How Does Artist Receive Money From Spotify?
Well, there’s also a different explanation for this. Spotify directly doesn’t pay the artists but actually, the distributors they have an agreement with. When the earnings are generated by the streams Spotify sends the revenue to the entity it signed the contract with like distributors or a label.
After that, the entity will mostly take a chunk of money for being a third party as a ‘distribution fee’. The more massive the company, the more they charge. Then finally the label pays the remaining money to the artists. According to Spotify, the royalty payments are made once a month. But then again it depends upon the contract.
Spotify noted, “Every month, in each country we operate in, we calculate streamshare by adding up how many times music owned or controlled by a particular rights holder was streamed and dividing it by the total number of streams in that market.” There are famous distributors with credibility that don’t charge anything from the artists and process their payments for free.
Conclusion
Well, you must have understood that Spotify doesn’t pay the artists per stream or play but is based on streamshare. The royalty payment that artists receive from Spotify doesn’t have any involvement in that. The streamshare calculations vary from month to month. If you are a music fanatic, but running low on money – here’s the method to get Spotify Free Trial in 2023.
That’s the main reason Spotify doesn’t give a precise royalty number to artists. Well, if you are planning to start publishing your tracks on Spotify then we wish you the best. A mind-blowing response from the streamers will also depend upon your input in the marketing and promotion of your tracks.
Through this, you can attract more streamers. You can even make out a whole plan and achieve those goals to stand out amongst other artists. The beginning might be a little challenging but over time it will be worth it. You can drop your questions in the comment section below. Also, feel free to stay tuned with us for more content like this in the future.
