Who among us does not love the idea of having a several million plus music library at our fingertips? I confess that I am hooked on streaming. It's easy, I discover more music, and with recent innovations like our upcoming AirLens (or any number of good sounding streaming platforms), the sound quality is impressive.
It's also a nice feeling to know that every time you stream a track of music the artist gets paid something. Question is, how much?
Here's the information by service, showing how much is paid for one stream. The third column is how many streams are required to make $1.
| STREAMING PLATFORM | ROYALTY RATES (PER STREAM) | STREAMS REQUIRED TO MAKE $1 |
|---|---|---|
| Tidal Music | $0.01284 | 78 |
| Apple Music | $0.008 | 125 |
| Amazon Music | $0.00402 | 249 |
| Spotify | $0.00318 | 314 |
| YouTube Music | $0.002 | 500 |
| Pandora | $0.00133 | 752 |
| Deezer | $0.0011 | 909 |
Let's put this in perspective. Every time you play a track on the highest paid service out there, Tidal, the artist basically gets paid 1 cent—Apple, Amazon, and Spotify, 1/2 cent.
A penny for your thoughts, and a penny for your music.
It's always nice to feel like you're contributing something to artists when streaming their music. Now you know how much.
If you're Taylor Swift, those pennies add up.
If you're not...
Hopefully, this sheds a bit of light on the reasons why we at Octave Records don't publish our library on streaming services.
A penny's nice, but a dollar goes further.
