Use our Spotify royalty calculator below to help you estimate how much streaming revenue you can earn as an artist on Spotify, Amazon Music, or Apple Music.
How to Use the Streaming Calculator
The streaming calculator tool uses an estimate of the payout rate per stream for the different streaming platforms (more on this below).
Simply enter the number of streams into the calculator (either by typing a number or using the slider) and select your output currency.
The tool will then calculate the Spotify / Apple / Amazon payout for musicians using the relevant royalty rate for each music streaming platform.
If you choose the Guesstimate Streams checkbox then you do not need to enter a figure for Apple Music or Amazon Music, we will guesstimate how many streams you will receive based on the amount of Spotify streams.
What are Streaming Royalties?
A royalty payment is money owed to the rights holder of music when it is performed publicly, sold, or streamed.
Streaming royalties are therefore split between the rights holders, the majority going to the owner of the recording (this will be paid to your distributor, or record label), the rest going to the songwriter.
How Are Streaming Royalties Calculated?
Streaming platforms like Spotify / Amazon Music / Apple Music don’t actually have a specific royalty rate per stream. The figures from the royalty calculator above are just estimates.
The way streaming platforms calculate how much to pay in royalties is by summing up all the generated income from subscriptions and advertising, and then dividing this by the number of streams per month.
This way, the amount of money you earn per stream is variable even on the same music streaming platform.
As an example, let’s say a random pandemic forces people to stay at home, so all the subscribers of Spotify started streaming music twice as much as they had in the previous month.
This means that Spotify splits its revenue (in this example the same as the month before) over twice the number of streams. So each individual stream is worth half the amount it was the previous month.
How Much Do Artists Earn Per Stream?
The amount an artist can earn per stream changes depending on which streaming platform you use. Apple, for example, doesn’t have a free version of their streaming service, therefore they can pay more per stream than Spotify, which does have a free version.
If you want to see the estimated average rate per stream for each of the streaming services you can enter 1 stream into the streaming royalty calculator above.
How Much Does Spotify Pay Per Stream?
It’s estimated the per stream rate for Spotify is $0.00318. However, Spotify doesn’t technically pay artists one standard per stream rate.
Spotify pools it’s revenue from memberships and advertising, takes a percentage for themselves, and then divides the rest by the number of plays it has received that month.
Spotify then multiplies this by the amount of streams you’ve received.
This is a simplification of the whole overall process. Things can get confusing when you start to factor in the different values put on paid / free streams.
We haven’t included YouTube in our streaming royalty calculator, as the payment structure is too complex to create a realistic estimate per stream. This is something we will be looking to include in future so be sure to bookmark this tool for future use.
