How much do you make on Spotify?
Spotify is arguably the most popular music streaming service out there right now. The platform is a convenient way for users to listen to music online. Artists, for their part, can make money with Spotify. How much that is depends on the views of their songs. In general, the following applies: the more popular an artist is, the more money he gets from Spotify .
Earnings on Spotify
Musicians can earn money in different ways: Through concerts, merchandising and of course their music. Streaming has long outstripped physical data carriers such as CDs and downloads. And when you think of music streaming, the first thing that comes to mind is Spotify. The company was founded in 2006 by Swedes Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. She began streaming in October 2008 after agreeing on a compensation model with major record labels. In March 2009 they had one million users, in May 2014 there were ten million, in June 2016 already 100 million users. In 2021, the streaming service will have 345 million active users . The service is now available in 93 countries.
Spotify pays money to the musicians per stream
The streaming service itself is covered with information about how much the artists are paid. However, some musicians have been quite generous in revealing how much money they receive through the platform. The American cellist Zoë Keating even put a precise tabular listing of her earnings for 2017 on the Internet. Accordingly, she earned around 8,300 euros with around 2.6 million streams on Spotify. This means that her Spotify earnings were 0.0032 euros per stream. However, it is unclear how much money the two labels that distributed the musician’s works received.
In addition, the Spotify money per stream varies in different countries . It depends, among other things, on the number of subscribers and the total amount of streams in the respective country. If there are many users in a country, then the money per click is higher than in a national market where the platform itself generates relatively little revenue.
The rapper’s earnings per stream
In Germany, rappers in particular are quite open about Spotify earnings . Farid Bang recently provided information about how much money he collects from the streaming platform. He revealed that he needed 2.6 million streams to get 10,000 euros. This is roughly the number of streams he can show per month. Farid Bang receives around 0.0038 euros per stream, and around 3,800 euros for one million streams. The rappers Kollegah and RAF Camora have also spoken of similar values in the past .
Drake made the most money on Spotify
However, compared to the most successful musician on Spotify, this is only small change. In January 2021, Drake became the first artist ever to break the sound barrier of a total of 50 billion Spotify streams. If you assume a value of 0.0035 euros per stream, then Drake has a Spotify earnings of 175 million euros gross . Of course, taxes have to be deducted from this, as well as fees to the record labels.
Other music streaming providers
It should be noted that there are other streaming providers. The best known are Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube Music and Tidal. Their distributions to the artists sometimes differ significantly from those made by Spotify. For example, Tidal and Apple Music reportedly pay twice what Spotify pays , while YouTube Music only gives artists half of Spotify’s earnings.
Incidentally, Spotify generates its income from paying customers. In addition to limited free use, the platform offers several paid subscriptions. The standard subscription costs 9.99 euros in Germany and Austria as of 2021, a duo subscription for two users 12.99 euros and a family subscription for up to six users 14.99 euros. Students can take out a low-cost subscription for €4.99. At the end of 2020, the streaming service had a total of 345 million users worldwide, with 155 million of them having a paid subscription. The company’s turnover in 2020 was almost 7.9 billion euros . However, it made a loss of 581 million euros.