What we can tell is that royalty rates are actually dropping, as more free users join the platform and take up the majority percentage of users on the app. The platform actually used to openly display their estimated pay-per-stream rate to be “between $0.006 and $0.0084”, however has since taken down the section of their webpage that showed this information. In addition, these rates differ between signed and unsigned artists, different distributors, and even the royalties earned through a Performing Rights Organization (PRO).Īccording to Indie Music Academy’s Music Royalties Explained: The Ultimate Guide for 2020, Spotify’s mechanical royalty rate is about 10.5% of the company’s gross revenue, minus the cost of public performance. There are multiple factors that go into how much an artist will make per stream off their music: The listener’s location and which country they are streaming from whether the listener has a paid subscription to the platform if they are listening with a free account (this calculates premium users as a percentage of the total users) what you as the artist have as your specified royalty rates based on in-app advertisements and lastly, the currency and pricing conversions for different areas. The reason why it is difficult to determine an exact number for royalty rates per stream is because most platforms do not have a pay-per-stream rate. The reality is that most artists make less than a cent for one stream, however the actual pay out can vary from platform to platform. However, it is quite commonly known in the industry that these platforms do not compensate artists nearly as much as they deserve when it comes to how much per stream they would earn. This gave rise to the applications we know and consistently use today: Spotify, Tidal, Deezer, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. Since the development of the Napster (1999), the music industry has experienced a great shift towards music streaming platforms in which users are able to access large music libraries at a low cost per month, rather than owning a personal copy (i.e.

Whether you are an artist under one of the major record labels or an independent musician producing music in their home studio, you will eventually want to know how much you earn when people consume your music.

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