Spotify royalties calculator

How much does Spotify pay per stream?

Spotify does not pay a fixed amount per stream, and neither does any other platform. Spotify says it pays about two thirds of the money it makes from music to the people who own the rights. That money is shared pro-rata: each month, in each country, your share of all the streams there decides your share of that country's pool.

Turned into an average, the recording side of a Spotify stream is commonly reported between about 0.003 and 0.005 USD, according to artists, distributors and industry analyses published between 2023 and 2025. That is the range this calculator uses. It is the money paid for the master, through your distributor or label, before they take their part.

Where your listeners live moves the number most. A premium listener in a country with a high subscription price is worth several times a free listener in a country with a low one. A song with most of its streams in the United States, the United Kingdom or Scandinavia lands near the top of the range; one with most of its streams on free accounts or in lower priced markets lands near the bottom, or below it.

Spotify's 1,000 streams rule

Since the first quarter of 2024, Spotify pays no recorded royalties for a track that had fewer than 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months. The money those tracks would have earned goes back to the pool and is shared among the tracks that pass. The rule does not change publishing royalties.

That is why the calculator asks over how many tracks your streams are spread. 5,000 streams on one song earn royalties; the same 5,000 spread over ten songs, 500 each, earn nothing on Spotify. If your catalogue is large and your streams are thin, putting your effort behind fewer songs can change what you earn.

Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Tidal and Deezer

Apple is the one platform that published a number itself: in a letter to artists in April 2021 it said its rate averaged 0.01 USD per play. We use 0.006 to 0.01 USD, because the average falls as plans change and the mix of countries moves. Tidal has a smaller, mostly paying audience and is commonly reported between 0.008 and 0.0125 USD.

YouTube Music, Amazon Music and Deezer are commonly reported between about 0.002 and 0.008 USD, with wide spreads because they mix free and paid listening and many countries. Deezer moved to an artist-centric model in 2023 that weighs streams differently, so treat its range as rough. Plays of your music in ordinary YouTube videos pay through a different system and usually much less.

These ranges are estimates as of 2023 to 2025, never quotes. The platforms change prices and rules, and every distributor reports a little differently. Your own statements are the real numbers.

Splits, labels and publishing: who gets what

A stream pays two sides. The master, the recording, is paid to whoever releases it: your distributor if you are independent, your label if you are signed. Distributors either charge a yearly fee and pass on everything, or keep a commission, often 10 to 20 percent. A label keeps its share under your contract, and the artist's share is what is left.

The artist's share is then split with the people on the record: a featured artist, the producer's points. In the calculator each collaborator takes a percentage of your share, the usual way producer points are written. The breakdown shows every cut and what reaches you.

The other side is publishing, the song itself, paid to songwriters and publishers through collecting societies, mechanical rights organisations and publishing administrators, never through your distributor. In the United States the rate set for streaming mechanicals and performance together is about 15 percent of a service's revenue, against roughly half for the recording. We start publishing at 25 percent of the master money and you can change it. If you write your songs and nobody collects your publishing, that money waits for you: register your songs with a collecting society.

Learn more, or get a person on it

Read the mastering guides, comparisons and data, or send your tracks to an engineer with OBRA ULTRA.