Streaming Royalties Calculator

Where do you get the data from?

The pay rate of each service comes from an analysis of my own royalties data, filtered to the last year (2023).

How accurate is this calculator?

The calculator is based on real streaming royalty payments. As many factors affect the pay rate, this is an approximation.

Since it’s based on my data, it’s accurate for me. My average pay rate appears to be lower than other reports I’ve seen; consider this a pessimistic calculator.

Note: I don’t have as much data from Tidal or Deezer compared to Meta or Spotify. Calculations for those services might be less accurate.

Why is the pay rate different for each service?

Many factors affect the pay rate, including:

• decisions made by top executives
• a user’s subscription type: paid subscriptions yield more money per stream than free users
• the country where users are located: countries have different subscription prices (which translates to different royalties)
• the volume of streams in a month: the more streams, the less money each stream gets

These factors change over time.

How much does Spotify pay per stream?

In 2023, Spotify paid me between $0.000003 and $0.0072 per stream. The mean was $0.0025 and the median $0.0023.