Comment by chrneu
4 days ago
be aware that payout rates change based on tiers and a bunch of other factors. So, it would likely take more than 40 million streams to earn $80k.
I believe Weird Al posted his streaming revenue a few years ago. He had something like 80 million streams and said he earned about $12. https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/weird-al-yankovic-wrappe...
There is a reason people like T Swift and whatnot tour constantly, it's how they make money. Weird Al is known for his amazing live shows, there's a reason for it: they make more money.
Ad supported streams in Spotify are counted in a separate pool, and only get paid out of the ad revenue pool.
Artists can of course complain that "they're selling our music for cheap!", especially in the ad pool. But what's worth remembering is that when it comes to setting optimal price points, Spotify's interest is almost perfectly aligned with the artists. And Spotify has a hell of a lot more data than artists (not to mention financial sense, which you probably didn't become an artist if you had a lot of).
> Ad supported streams in Spotify are counted in a separate pool, and only get paid out of the ad revenue pool.
What are the rough rates for each pool? That's the important part here. And how many artists are far enough from the average ratio that the detail of two pools matters.
https://soundcamps.com/spotify-royalties-calculator/ This site says $0.00238 is typical for "worldwide" and a lot more than that for US and Europe specifically.
I'd be interested in knowing that too, as far as I know Spotify doesn't publish details to the public at least.
But I have no trouble believing some artists will be vastly overrepresented in the ad financed pool. Also, there are separate pools by country, and countries have different subscription prices - being big in Japan will be more profitable than being big in India.
Payout per stream is a terrible metric. It's almost like if you ranked grocery stores by payment per gram.
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> people like T Swift and whatnot tour constantly
Maybe not the best comparison to anything. Swift is known for being an even better busiensswoman than artist and obsessed with having control.
She screwed her record company for profits, not the other way around. Not many people have done that. She's likely making money on both ends of the stick.
The Pudding had a nice article explaining how streaming revenue is distributed: https://pudding.cool/2022/06/streaming/
When he says "so if I'm doing the math right that means I earned $12" I interpret that as him exaggerating for effect. It's definitely not him citing the pay slip.
"$2 or more per thousand streams, split across rightsholders" seems like an accurate estimate.