How Much Does Spotify Pay Per Stream in 2024? (2024)

Streaming platforms have revolutionized music sales. There’s just no way around it—if you’re an artist, you have to upload your music for streaming. In 2019, digital streams accounted for nearly 80% of total music sales globally, and the number continues to grow each year. That’s all good and well, but as an artist, you want to know how big your piece of the pie can be. So, just how much does Spotify, one of the industry’s top platforms, pay per stream?

How Much Does Spotify Pay Per Stream?

Technically, YouTube is the biggest streaming platform in the world. Its numbers are just mind-boggling, and it’s no surprise people are still listening to and watching music videos on the site. In fact, YouTube accounts for 37% of all internet traffic daily, and is the second-ranked site in the world.

However, Spotify is still the top app strictly for streaming music. Apple Music is a close second, but as it stands, Spotify is the most widely used. This means that artists will need to get their music on Spotify, as well as the other top services if they plan to generate any sort of revenue from their music.

Unfortunately, Spotify has been under the microscope in recent years for its seemingly abysmal payout rates. While the numbers certainly don’t do much to encourage, it’s important to understand how it all works from a money-making perspective.

  • Worldwide, the average that Spotify pays per stream is $0.003

The actual rate per stream is anywhere between $0.001 and $0.008. This is all based on who’s listening: where they’re from, whether they’re a free or paid user, how many ads they’ve sat through, whether they’ve clicked through and bought anything from those ads, and a whole lot more. For our purposes, knowing the average is enough—$0.003, or less than 1 cent.

How much does Spotify pay per 1000 streams?

How Much Does Spotify Pay Per Stream in 2024? (1)

Artists who get 1000 streams on a song can expect to generate revenue worth about $3. Let’s be real; this is not an impressive number. Spotify is going to take their cut; if you’re signed to a label, the label takes their cut; if there are multiple credited songwriters, everyone splits the share; and you’re left with your share.

How many streams on Spotify = $1000?

On average, you’ll have to earn 300,000 to 350,000 streams to generate roughly $1000. Due to those variables we mentioned above, however, streams are not created equally. The actual number of streams needed to earn $1000 can range anywhere from 150,000 on the low side to 600,000 on the high side.

How Does Spotify Pay Artists?

Recording royalties are paid through the licensor that delivered the music, i.e., a record label or a distributor. Depending on the distributor you used, they might also collect a percentage, though most of them deliver 100% of royalties to the artist.

Publishing royalties consist of the money owed to songwriter(s) or owner(s) of a composition. These payments are issued to publishers, collecting societies, and mechanical agencies.

Spotify Royalty Rates

According to Spotify,

Spotify pays royalties for all of the listening that occurs on our service by distributing nearly 70% of all the revenues that we receive back to rights holders. By ‘rights holders,’ we are referring to the owners of the music that is on Spotify: labels, publishers, distributors, and, through certain digital distributors, independent artists themselves.

Though the actual royalty/payout rate is much more complex:

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.

So if an artist received one in every 1,000 streams in Mexico on Spotify, they would receive one of every $1,000 paid to rights holders from the Mexican royalty pool. That total royalty pool for each country is based on the subscription and music advertising revenues in that market.

Spotify’s “Loud and Clear” page attempts to answer the numerous and varied questions regarding royalties artists may have. It’s not simple; and to further muddy things up, Spotify doesn’t go by the pay-per-stream model themselves. That said, the numbers we’ve calculated are useful averages when an emerging artist just wants to know what they should expect in terms of money.

Spotify Pay Per Stream vs. Tidal vs. Apple Music

  • Tidal:approximately $0.01 per stream
  • Apple Music:approximately $0.008 per stream
  • Spotify:approximately $0.003 per stream

Spotify pays less per stream than both Tidal and Apple Music. However, based on 2020 reports, Apple Music has 72 million active subscribers compared to Spotify’s 144 million. Tidal comparatively pays extremely well per stream, but active subscribers total just 3 million.

How Much Does Spotify Pay Per Stream in 2024? (2)

In short, having your music on Spotify could potentially expose your music to millions and millions more listeners. Whether that justifies the payout gap per stream compared to other services is open to interpretation.

Can you make money on Spotify as an artist?

Theoretically, of course you can, but you’ll need to see real streaming numbers to see any real cash. Using the average of $0.003 per stream, you would have to get a million streams a month to make $3000/month. Artists don’t just rely on streaming to make their money, though, so you’ll also have to diversify and get creative to make money as an artist. You’ll need to sell merch and exclusive content, potentially do a side hustle as an engineer/producer, and whatever else it takes.

One way to start maximizing your potential earnings as an artist is to get registered with a Performing Rights Organization (PRO). They’ll help collect all of the royalties your music earns, whether it’s played on the radio, played in a live venue, synced for TV or film, or more.

Conclusion

We’ve seen the numbers. Spotify doesn’t pay much per stream. But that shouldn’t discourage you from pursuing a living as an artist. The reality is you’ll need to find other sources of revenue apart from digital streaming, whether you get 100 streams per month or a million.

How Much Does Spotify Pay Per Stream in 2024? (2024)

FAQs

How Much Does Spotify Pay Per Stream in 2024? ›

So, how much money does Spotify pay per stream? Spotify's average payout rate for artists starts at $0.003 and $0.004 per stream. From 2024 onwards, Spotify will only compensate artists with streaming royalties if they accumulate 1,000 plays within the past year.

How much do artists get paid on Spotify 2024? ›

Starting in January 2024, Spotify will start paying artists once they reach 1,000 streams in the last 12 months. In other words, if you reach 1 million streams, you will receive about $3,000 to $4,000 in royalties throughout your digital distribution.

How many Spotify plays does it take to make $1000? ›

On average, you'll have to earn 300,000 to 350,000 streams to generate roughly $1000. Due to those variables we mentioned above, however, streams are not created equally. The actual number of streams needed to earn $1000 can range anywhere from 150,000 on the low side to 600,000 on the high side.

How much does Spotify pay for $1 million streams? ›

How much does 1 million streams on Spotify pay? The payment for 1 million streams on Spotify can vary, but it is generally estimated to be around $4,000 to $7,000. This amount is, however, split between the streaming platform and the rights holders.

How much is 100k streams on Spotify? ›

As for how much Spotify pays per stream, they pay roughly $0.00238 per stream. This is based on the Worldwide Average (all the countries added up, divided by number of countries). So, 1000 streams would be around $2.38, and 100,000 streams would be $238, and 1,000,000 streams would be $2380.

How much is 1 billion streams on Spotify? ›

🙄 1 billion streams on Spotify = $40,000? While that's not accurate for all artists, that's the revelation Snoop Dogg recently made when he received recognition from the Swedish company. Considering that the average payout for each stream is $0.004, he should be earning a lot more than that.

How much does Taylor Swift make from Spotify? ›

The estimated $131 million in royalties Taylor Swift's music earned from Spotify is 1.3% of $9.7 billion, so I'll assume she received 1.3% of all Spotify royalty payments. Taylor Swift is paid as both the composer and performer of her music, and also owns the master recordings of the “Taylor's Version” of her albums.

How much money do 2 million streams on Spotify make? ›

You can earn 0.00437 per stream x 2 million streams = $8,740, if you want to make more money stably, you can use a Spotify stream bot. AIO_Stream is a simple and powerful music promotion tool that you can use to grow your SoundCloud profile.

How much does Apple pay for 1 million streams? ›

Simply multiply the average per-play rate of $0.01 by the total number of streams in a specific month. For example, if your album garners 100K streams, you'll earn $1000. And if it gets 1 million streams, your royalties are $10,000. You can also use an Apple Music royalties calculator to estimate your earnings.

Who is the highest paid artist on Spotify? ›

Since last updating this list last month, K-pop band BTS has been replaced by Kanye West thanks to the release of his 2024 album VULTURES 1. Taylor Swift is still the queen of Spotify, with over 81 million lead streams, putting her total earnings at over $327 million.

How much does Drake make from Spotify? ›

As the most-streamed artist of the 2010s – and in Spotify history – the 6 God carries the Spotify title of having some of the most-played songs on the platform, including 2016's "One Dance" and 2018's "God's Plan." In 2021, EDM.com estimated that Drake's streams made him a high earner, banking $52 million in Spotify ...

Does Spotify pay artists fairly? ›

Spotify pays artists a certain amount for each stream, but the rate varies. It typically ranges from about $0.003 to $0.005 per stream. The exact amount can depend on the type of subscription you have (Premium or Free), where you are listening from, and the specific agreements Spotify has with artists or their labels​.

Did Spotify pay 130 artists more than $5 m last year? ›

The news came on the company's Loud And Clear website, which was launched last year with the aim of "increasing transparency" around its payments. The streaming giant said 52,600 artists earned more than $10,000 (£7,500) from Spotify in 2021. Of those, 130 were paid more than $5m (£3.8m) over the last 12 months.

How much does Spotify pay out to artists per year? ›

Royalties are the revenue you make as an artist from someone streaming your music. And as of May 2022, Spotify pays artists between $0.003 – $0.005 per stream on average. So this works out at 70% to the artist and 30% to Spotify in terms of revenue.

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