By, Wendy Day
Six months ago, on this blog, I wrote an article about streaming that showed how much a new independent rapper was earning from streaming (https://wendyday.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/the-realities-of-streaming-music-for-artists/). Here are the streaming income figures five months later:
Single streams:
Apple Music — 0.005103035 per stream — 196 streams=$1.00
Aspiro — 0.001676301 per stream — 597 streams=$1.00
Deezer — 0.00510566 per stream– 196 streams=$1.00
Google Play — 0.005278658 per stream — 189 streams=$1.00
Groove — 0.031113139 per stream — 32 streams=$1.00
Rhapsody — 0.004579501 per stream — 218 streams=$1.00
Slacker — 0.006153846 per stream — 163 streams=$1.00
Soundcloud — 0.001305585 per stream — 766 streams=$1.00
Soundcloud Subscription — 0.01037594 per stream — 96 streams=$1.00
Spotify — 0.003589881 per stream — 279 streams=$1.00
Tidal — 0.0054 per stream — 185 streams=$1.00
Vevo — 0.002071429 per stream — 483 streams=$1.00
YouTube — 0.001288172 per stream — 776 streams=$1.00
In terms of volume, this artist is streamed twice as much on Spotify as Apple Music, but Spotify has 40 million paying subscribers (September 2016) and 100 million overall subscribers while Apple Music has 17 million (August 2016) paid (and overall) subscribers. If Amazon and Pandora are each separately to offer a $5.99 streaming service (or if Prime members get Amozon music for free), they may each be a force to be reckoned with. Pandora already has around 80 million active monthly users. Pandora does not pay via a distributor since it’s not considered an on-demand streaming service, but pays like an Internet radio station through SoundExchange.
“Currently, Pandora pays the US statutory webcasting rate for a non-interactive platform: $0.0017 per play for non-subscription and $0.022 per play for subscription – money which goes through SoundExchange. SoundExchange splits this money between labels and acts, paying artists directly. The big bonus for performers: their share hits their bank accounts in its entirety, remaining undiminished by debts left by previous label advances,” according to Music Business Worldwide.
Bear in mind that these figures above are based on an 80/20 split with the distributor, so all figures reflect 20% less than what the streaming platform actually paid.
On my end, what I’m trying to figure out is why the payment amounts from April streams differ from the payment amounts from December. Very curious, indeed. Perhaps it has something to do with the exchange rate of foreign country’s payments? Meanwhile, this should put an end to the speculation regarding what a new independent rapper earns from streaming. I took this directly from a royalty statement.
Wendy Day 
Paul Resnikoff
September 15, 2016
Wow really interesting data. The more stats that are thrown out there the better, and this covers a lot of services.
bucketskeen
September 16, 2016
Currently, Pandora pays the US statutory webcasting rate for a non-interactive platform: $0.0017 per play for non-subscription and $0.022 per play for subscription – money which goes through SoundExchange.
SoundExchange splits this money between labels and acts, paying artists directly. The big bonus for performers: their share hits their bank accounts in its entirety, remaining undiminished by debts left by previous label advances. –Music Business World
Wendy Day
November 9, 2016
More Pandora stats: 78 million monthly listeners and 3.9 million subscribers as of November 2016 according to Engadget (11/9/16 article).
TIML Staff
December 9, 2016
this is un real smh