ok, this is pretty outdated. I looked up around 15 different sites from the last 12 months, and is looks the common ground regarding payouts is like this:
- Bandcamp $0.85-$1.00 (via sales)
- Tidal $0.012-$0.015
- Qobuz $0.0136-$0.022
- Apple Music $0.007-$0.01
- Deezer $0.006-$0.009
- Amazon Music $0.004-$0.007
- Spotify $0.003-$0.005
- SoundCloud $0.0025-$0.004
- YouTube Music $0.005-$0.008
- Patreon (hybrid) $5-$50+ per subscriber
But there are some quirks with that list. Deezer for example, landing in the middle of the pack in general, has some rules since 2023 that are very pro-artist:
- Artists with at least 1,000 monthly streams from 500 listeners get double weight in the royalty pool.
- Streams earn more when a listener searches for your song than when an algorithm queues it up.
- White noise, rain sounds, and other non-music content came out of the pool entirely, so those royalties now go to actual songs.
- They are based in France, so the BuyEuropean crowd is also satisfied.
Spotify pays shit for single streams, but if you hit it big, you will also receive a lot more cash, making them more attractive for artist with an already existing fanbase.
Soundcloud on the other hand works pretty well to build up an fan base in the first place, during the time where you realistically can’t expect to be living from royalities anyways.
Bandcamp is actually great if you are known enough to get album sales, but not known enough to hit big streaming numbers. (also known as “the bands that are probably worth listening to, while not being mainstream”)
Patreon gives a steady income, but it also means more of an youtuber-style of life than an classic Musician - it puts you under pressure to put out content on a regular basis, and that is not every artists strength.
Why is the list not sorted?
sorry, i switched up tidal and qobuz. fixed now. Youtube is below because it is a music video platform, meaning that the amount of work you have to put in is quite a bit larger.
Ah okay, makes sense I suppose. Thanks for explaining.
Yeah, it is not directly comparable in the case of Youtube. You might get by providing some static background or a loop for the video part, but let’s be honest, if you are subscribing to Youtube for music, you expect full blown music videos, and it might hurt your numbers if you don’t provide that.
I like this, thank you for the effort you put into making it.
A neat separate study would be of user experiences. I tried desperately to use Tidal but everything about it was inferior (for me) to Spotify. Bandcamp is at the top of the list, but my word they’re even worse for finding, searching, and organizing playlists.
Cool. That is a step up. They used to play on the radio and the artist got nothing. They moved to digital and managed to get a pay per click. Pretty good.
The pay went to the publisher and songwriter back then, does it now? Do these numbers reflect that cut?
Music on the radio was an ad. People would go buy it if they liked it or see the band when it came to town. I wonder how much streaming converts to merch, performance, and possibly direct payment if at all for support?
There is a LOT more artists than ever before, the barrier to entry is low. Cut throat industry as always.
? Artists got paid for their work being broadcast. What are you talking about?
The publisher still takes a cut. Then and now
What pisses me off about this was a video I saw on youtube a few years ago. Originally recorded from a twitch stream.
Snoop dogg was to be interviewed by some music promotion stream. He showed up 45 minutes late, and when the host was interviewing him, he asked why snoop was so late. To which snoop responded with something like “DAAAAMN! I’M HERE, AIN’T I??? DON’T WORRY WHY I’M LATE! YOU ASKIN STUPID QUESTIONS! I GET HERE WHEN I WANT TO GET HERE! THIS IS RIGHT ON TIME!!! WE WENT TO GO GET CHICKEN! CAN’T A MAN GO GET CHICKEN???”
Then later in the interview they asked him about when he was going to release a new album. And he responded by going off on a rant about how albums don’t make money. Then he started saying all he made from spotify from people playing Doggystyle (the album that made him famous back in 1993) was $42,000 in a month.
He was complaining about getting $42,000 from an album that came out almost 30 years prior at that point. All he did was grant spotify the right to stream his music. He didn’t record new music. He didn’t make some new project. All he did was sign a contract to make passive money from songs that were recorded a decade before most listeners were even born.
I lost all respect for him when he casually dismissed an entire year worth of some peoples pay, to be paid to him monthly, for doing nothing. He acted entitled that it wasn’t enough. That it was insultingly low pay for a month of work.
As much as he’s wrong to take that tone, I’m not defending spotify either. They’ve been caught, multiple times, creating fictional AI bands, so the small amount they do pay, they don’t have to pay. The idea was to slowly push real artists out, and create new pop culture icons discovered through their app. Which they don’t have to pay for ever.
I don’t know what the plan is if ever their plan had worked, and people started demanding a tour.
Hatsune Miku is one way to do it.
Another is to make hologram concerts, which I believe have been done with deceased artists
Wait… Napster still exists?
They’re very AI centric these days, but their streaming service isn’t bad.
They deserve to be destroyed.
Why? Honestly curious.
Any company largely depending on AI does. Any CEO of such company doesn’t deserve freedom ever again.
Lars, is that you?
well that’s an utterly horrifying page
3 of 5 of their “AI Agents” depicted in that frontpage clip don’t contribute anything. How fitting.
The site confused me on what Napster is trying to be.
For reals. I have no idea what their company is.
limewire still exists.
If I hear bearshare still exists I’ll be convinced it’s 2005
That’s why the payout per stream is number 1.
I mean, on the off chance someone even uses Napster.
Google Play Music hasn’t been a thing since 2020. I doubt these numbers are accurate anymore.
I was thinking the exact same. YouTube music just isn’t the same and they can’t stop messing with the UI.
I still prefer YT Music over Spotify, there is simply more niche stuff that absolutely slaps and is not available on Spotify
Not to mention you can block ads more easily
Which is probably why its pay is ass, because half of us just listens for free without ads
Half of us maybe but we are only 40k, it’s a drop in a sea of non-tech users. Don’t worry Google is going to be fine
This info is outdated, Napster does not do music anymore. I spent five years using it, but last year more and more tracks started disappearing from the database, to the point the service was unusable, and when I went on their website to unsubscribe I saw they were no mention of music strraming, just their AI agents productivity stuff.
Except I have like 12k streams on Spotify and have never gotten anything from them. I have a small number on other platforms and have received at least something from them.
Maybe they only pay once you reach some amount? I know that Steam don’t pay you until you reach at least 100us, and 12k sum to 52us.
I was very confused by your post because “us” was read by me as “microseconds” instead of how you meant it as “USD”.
I was thinking “100 microseconds is a really short play time; surely people listen it the tracks for at least that long.”
I’m sure that’s probably the reason but at the same time, I’m getting paid from the other platforms where I have far far less streams.
Wait…Napster now legit?
Have not paid attention (or money for music) in years. Thought they were pirates…
Years ago some company bought the rights to the Napster name and tried to run a streaming service by that name. You can guess how successful that’s been given nobody’s heard of the thing they tried to make with the name they bought
This is something that would really benefit from a bar chart because the numbers are wildly different and they aren’t round enough for humans to easily handle.
What is “Google Play” doing on the list? It’s not a streaming app…?
It it like a residual of a residual for other apps that technically steam something while not being a regular stacking app…? I’m utterly confused by this.
I also don’t get how Napster is there. It was P2P and shut down after a bunch of lawsuits. Are they calculating based on the payouts?
Napster was bought out by Rhapsody and Rhapsody rebranded to Napster. Though they are also in bed with AI tech. :/
Looks like Google Play Music was the product name until it was discontinued in 2020. This is a clue that this chart may be way out-of-date.
Nice
To this day it just drives me mad how this isn’t just calculated per second and per listener. If my kid listens to 10 hours of junk per day and then streams some influencer’s 45 second song, that person earns the same as when I turn on some 30 minutes progressive rock song and nothing else for the month.
If anything, streaming platforms should take the money they get from a person and send a fixed percentage of that too each second of content that person listened to.
How do you stream music from Google Play? I know that you can stream music with YouTube, but Google Play?
This is referencing Google Play Music from back before it was shutdown in favor of YouTube Music. In that case, this is from around 10 years ago give or take
I wonder if the numbers are that old, too? There’s a source organization listed, but not a link to the specific data. If it’s old, I’d like to know that. If it’s new, I’d like to check it for the Qobuz payout (which I’ve heard is slightly better than Tidal.)
Probably
I still miss that music app. It was the best. Deep catalog, and because Google is creepy like that, a very good understanding of what I consider local - it would recommend shows to me for bands I’d not heard of but were playing near me (literally nearby, not just in my state, or like Spotify did, “in my country”, but within 5 miles or so) and that it, in the wisdom of its algorithm knew I would like.
Why does everything get worse?
I’m not a fan of Google, especially in the last handful of years…but Google play music was great. I miss it.
Ive been out of the loop for a long time, but Napster pays more than “reputable” services?
What a timeline
Napster switched from music to AI agents earlier this year
Overly complicated industry presented as overly simplistic graphic gets tons of votes from uneducated denizens. More at 11.
To name one thing: each of these uses a different definition for what a stream constitutes.
