Amuse Productions

By Adrian Mancilla

In This day and age, music is a lot more accessible than it has ever been. Per Spotify’s numbers, they claim that during the 2022-2023 cycle, they are up to having 60,000 songs each day being uploaded, which totals to over 22 million tracks each year. (Spotify.com). Apple Music being another juggernaut in the music streaming business was celebrating 100 million songs having been uploaded to their service, with an average of 22,000 being uploaded everyday back in 2022. (Applemusic.com) However, how much do these artists truly make out of their streams? How much does a digital number translate into a financial gain?

As of 2022, the most up to date number, there are over 100 different streaming services to sign up for. Some free, and some (most), needing a monthly subscription to remove ads. The 3 biggest corporations are, Spotify with over 602 million users and 260 million subscribers, Soundcloud with over 175 million users, and Apple Music with a projected over 101 million subscribers per 2024. With how many subscribers and users in general, is there a big difference for an artist to make money in one platform to another?

For each artist there is normally a few ways for them to get paid per song, but the most common way is the relationship between a royalty and a master. A master is normally owned by the publishing company that has signed an artist or the record label. For example, Olivia Rodrigo who is signed to Geffen Records would receive a royalty, which is a certain percentage of the financial profit from a song, while Geffen Records would make the rest of the income due to owning the master, being the whole song. What does an artist get paid normally per stream however? Well, in the bigger streaming services, we can observe Spotify pays an estimated $0.00437 per stream, Apple Music raises to $0.00783 per stream, while funny enough some of the “smaller”, yet known streaming services such as Tidal offer $0.01284 per stream, and Napster offers $0.019 per stream. With all this talk of royalties and masters, lets take a look at a few artists that are personal favorites, but also analytically look at their streaming numbers.

The Weeknd

One of the biggest artists of the modern era Abel Tesfaye, better known as The Weeknd. Signed to his own Record Label, XO, a branch of Republic Records, The Weeknd has found 6 of his last released albums on the Billboard Hot 100, all under the ownership for XO Records of his friend and manager, Wassim Slaiby. The Weeknd has had two back-to-back albums that have broken records and have made impossible numbers that only the greats have reached, including his biggest hit to date, “Blinding Lights”, which spent 90 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, (Billboard.com) which is a record in itself, as well as being the most streamed song on Spotify out streaming Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You”, by gaining 3.335 Billion streams as of January 2023. (Forbes.com). As of today, “Blinding Lights” has surpassed 4 billion streams and continues to gain more. However, due to how big and unprecedented the song is, it’s tough to tell how much money this song made The Weeknd exactly, although I’m sure a huge amount, let’s take a look at one of the more “tame” songs from one of his most recent projects.

As of a month ago, on “Dawn FM”, The Weeknd’s last venture in 2022, “Out of Time”, being one of my personal favorites on the album has racked up 402 million streams on Spotify, which totals out to about $1.75 million in royalties towards The Weeknd out of this song’s streams. In terms of Apple Music the same equivalent would make The Weeknd $4.02 million, which really shows the difference of how these corporations value royalties differently. The song itself in terms of a distribution standpoint is unknown as to how much XO Records would be taking a cut from The Weeknd, but presumably since it is his own record label, it would be most of, if not the whole cut. To listen to this song it would cost the consumer, free on Spotify with ads, $10.99/month, Apple Music charges $10.99/month as well, while other platforms like YouTube may be free but it would be with ads.

Kendrick Lamar

Another polarizing artist who is a rotation on my playlists, out of Compton, California, is Kendrick Lamar, who I consider to be the greatest of all time. Formerly signed to Compton’s own TDE founder and CEO was Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith, now headlining his own label PGLang, Kendrick has had much a venture in the music world, from critically acclaimed albums like “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City”, to “To Pimp A Butterfly”, Kendrick has built a reputation for himself like no other. Most famously taking a 5 year hiatus from his album “DAMN.” in 2017, Kendrick made a spectacular return in 2022 with “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers”.

“Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers”, would debut at number one in the Billboard 200 chart, making Kendrick’s fourth number one album in the country. One of my personal favorites off of this album was “Die Hard”, which would go on to be nominated for a Grammy for “Best Melodic Rap Performance”. “Die Hard”, would go on to peak at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and as of now “Die Hard”, has garnered over 237 million streams on Spotify. This amount of streams would approximate to about $1.03 million, on Apple Music the same amount of streams would make $2.37 million. Napster would pay $4.5 million, and the craziest difference is YouTube only paying $160k and all of these numbers are based off the same equivalent of 237 million streams. Same case as with The Weeknd, this is yet another established artist who has their own record label and I’m sure would make most of their profit in their own pocket.

J. Cole

The Mayor of Dreamville himself is who we will look at next. Another heavily acclaimed artist in J. Cole has had such a meteoric rise to his career, from humble beginnings with his “Warm Up” mixtape era in the late 2000’s to early 2010’s, all the way a more experimental “KOD” in 2018, or the more confident “The Off Season” in 2021, J. Cole has made a name for himself in the hip-hop industry and has always made the argument with his career for being one to place on the Mount Rushmore of rappers. Released under his own record label as well, Dreamville, it is part of and under the banner of Roc Nation and Interscope, let’s take a look at one of the songs I keep on rotation from “The Off Season”.

“Let Go My Hand”, stylized as “l e t . g o . m y . h a n d”, was one of J. Cole’s most introspective songs on “The Off Season”, yet it also was one of the least popular on the album itself garnering 108 million streams on Spotify. The royalties for such a song would work out to be around $472k in stream revenue, which is the lowest of the 3 songs we’ve looked at so far. Th equivalent of which on Apple Music would be $1.08 million, while Napster again comes out being the top sharer at an equivalent of $2.05 million, and again YouTube being the least of the bunch with a “measly” $74k. In terms of how much the record label would make, well another artist with their own record label, which makes it a bit more difficult to look at. Especially being the CEO of Dreamville Records along with his long time friend Ibrahim “Ib” Hamad, its hard to tell exactly how much goes into J. Cole’s pocket, if not 100% of the revenue.

What is the point of streams and revenue?

Why bring up 3 fairly popular songs, from 3 established artists, with all 3 having their own record label? Well, its not only to prove a point that it is possible for artists to make the most amount of revenue from a song purely by streams, however if we notice the pattern, unless you’re making huge numbers like The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar, or J. Cole, you’re still going to be making 1% or less from your songs. Let’s look at a more realistic number, for a smaller artist about 10,000 streams is about right. 10,000 streams on Spotify makes you $43, Apple Music gives you $100, while the two highest and lowest, Napster would give a generous $190, while YouTube would distribute only $6.90. So, how is an artist in an age so accessible to be able to promote your content as well as have the privilege of uploading to all of these streaming platforms yourself, focus on making music full time?

Well, the good news is that most equipment is way less in price in comparison to the 90’s or 70’s, where mics would cost you a few thousand at least, while Shure now has mics that would cost you only a few hundred, but again to afford that, it brings in the obstacle of being able to now learn to use all of this equipment and most likely work solo to be your own producer, engineer, and songwriter all in one. It’s not a bad thing a all to do these things but even for an artist like myself, its tough to afford making music, distribute that music and still have to pay for promotion as well.

We talk about tax brackets in America, but I feel streaming services should have it more catered towards smaller artists, in the sense that having less streamers should make you just that tad bit more than a song that has 100x the streams. It’s always been a discussion that an 8 minute song would make the same amount of revenue as a 30 second song, which in hindsight is completely preposterous. If anything it should be based on time people spend listening to the song as well as the amount of listeners. For example, an artist with less than 1,000,000 monthly listeners on Spotify should be making about 7-10% each song, with that song being monitored to reach a certain amount and be adjusted accordingly. It should be completely algorithmically based with how many streams an artist has + how many streams that song has + how long said song is, would then = revenue from streams. Incentives are kind of lost as of now with how bedroom artists are looked at in the same light that The Weeknd is, which is an honor and a privilage, but sadly we don’t make the same streams.

All in all changes should be made, and it’s very interesting how Apple Music and Spotify, pay less than Napster having at its peak over 80 million users (Lifewire.com), yet even now with an estimated 5 million users, a fraction of Apple Music and Spotify users, they still refuse to change their royalties and pay their artists accordingly. Don’t get me wrong, I get the idea of fairness, but how fair is it to pay the same incentive of 1% and think that 100,000 is the same as 1 Billion?

Works Cited –

Dellatto, M. (2023, January 5). The weeknd’s “blinding lights” is now the most-streamed song in Spotify history. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2023/01/04/the-weeknds-blinding-lights-is-now-the-most-streamed-song-in-spotify-history/?sh=1c1197ea2c1a

Die hard. Spotify. (2022a, May 13). https://open.spotify.com/track/2g6tReTlM2Akp41g0HaeXN

Durani, D. (2023, December 16). Music streaming landscape: How many music streaming services are there?. AlphansoTech Blog. https://www.alphansotech.com/blog/music-streaming-landscape-how-many-music-streaming-services-are-there/

General Royalty Information. BMI.com. (n.d.). https://www.bmi.com/creators/royalty/general_information

Harris, M. (2023, February 16). A short history of Napster. Lifewire. https://www.lifewire.com/history-of-napster-2438592#:~:text=The%20service%20was%20extremely%20popular,were%20registered%20on%20its%20network.

How much do music streaming services pay musicians in 2024. RSS. (2024, January 11). https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/how-much-do-music-streaming-services-pay-musicians/

L E T . G O . M Y . H A N D (with Bas & 6LACK). Spotify. (2021, May 14). https://open.spotify.com/track/0GAyuCo975IHGxxiLKDufB

Mamo, H. (2023, April 18). The greatest hit: The new no. 1 song of all time. Billboard. https://www.billboard.com/music/features/the-weeknd-blinding-lights-billboard-cover-story-2021-interview-1235001282/

Out of time. Spotify. (2022b, January 7). https://open.spotify.com/track/25C86uEjQ0fjj3bvsxIusO

Soundcloud revenue and usage statistics in 2023. Dev Technosys. (n.d.). https://devtechnosys.com/data/soundcloud-statistics.php

Turner, A. (2024, February 6). Number of Apple Music Users & Subscribers. BankMyCell. https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/number-of-apple-music-users