Streaming has become a cornerstone for music lovers, but many artists hold a very very negative view of this access route, and the reason is simply money. Several well-documented incidents between acts and major distributors have led us back to a classic question: how much do they actually earn from streaming? The final numbers are far lower than we might imagine, and there is another detail: nearly all streaming services operate at a loss.
One of the first artists to recognize the internet's potential was that eternal cosmic titan David Bowie. On the other side of the fence, the most anti-internet singer I can remember is Prince, who controlled his intellectual property with an iron fist and ended up embroiled in ridiculous lawsuits, even attacking his own fans. Yet between these two extremes and technological advances, streaming emerged as a legal way to access content without harming artists. One of streaming's most important benefits is that it broke the tyranny of record labels, opening doors for thousands of independent artists. Then there is free access, which essentially works like a radio, injecting the occasional ad between tracks. The rest can be interpreted meritocratically: the more popular and attractive the material, the more money the artist earns. The big question is how much.
How much do streaming services really pay?
According to the data compiled by Information Is Beautiful, the numbers are less encouraging. The charts use a monthly minimum wage of $1,472 as a reference. Of course, this number changes drastically depending on the region, but if we follow the calculation and take the $10.5 per hour from a place like California, that gives us 35 hours per week. If an independent artist expects a song to reach that minimum wage, the last service they should use is YouTube. According to the chart, YouTube pays $0.0006 per stream, so it would need 2.4 million hits. Every Spotify stream delivers six times that amount, leaving about 380,000 plays. All the other services pay more. Google Play sits at $0.0059 per stream, and Apple Music nearly doubles Spotify with $0.0064. The most generous are Tidal and Napster (yes, Napster), with one cent per stream, but they don't exceed 10 million combined users.
Why streaming operates at a loss
If we look at the values for artists under a record label, the adjustments are in hundredths of a cent, but if there is something even more shocking in the charts, it's that all services (except Google Play and Apple Music, which have no information) operate at a loss. Spotify burns almost $200 million a year, while YouTube loses $174 million in the same period. Obviously, this compilation doesn't consider factors such as the percentage allocated to songwriters, tour revenues, and other secondary deals, but everything seems to confirm that streaming is not a source of income but a promotional tool.
