Calculating Royalties - Spotify

[ElmerJFudd]

Interesting site:

 

Royalty Calculator dot com

 

Based on Spotify"s data - plays artists get and what they say they pay artists. Also suggests which artists continue to have staying power in a streaming world.

 

Examples:

Taylor Swift - Rates 94% popularity - lots of plays daily. Earning $143.4K a month, $1.7M a year.

 

Sting - 72%, $25k a month, $298k a year.

 

Andy Summers - 36%, $30 a month, $366 a year.

 

J. Lo - 78%, $60k a month, $721k a year.

 

Harry Connick Jr. - 55%, $2.6k a month, $31.5k a year.

 

Keith Jarrett - 56%, $2.9k a month, $35k a year.

 

Gary Wright - 47%, 1.4k a month, $16.75k a year.

 

Enjoy!

[mcgoo]

I'd say Andy Summers is likely not a big fan of Spotify. Did he not participate in any of the songwriting for the police? I would think they get a fair amout of streams...

[ElmerJFudd]

Oh I was just teasing that comparison. I"m assuming these figures would be for their solo work. I would say, post Police, Andy isn"t short on cash and can dabble in putting out a record, or not. And it would be stuff he feels like playing, not worried about pop charts in the least.

[Docbop]

The church I worked at had a lot of big name celebrities many from the music industry. I worked there when Michael Jackson died and one of the congregation was Siedah Garrett who wrote MJ's song Man In the Mirror. Siedah even performed the song for the church in our memorial for MJ. Man In the Mirror after MJ's death got tons and tons of plays on all media including Spotify. Months later Siedah got her royalty check from Spotify for one dollar. There are pictures of her holding the check in an interview. So one of the biggest artists in the world dies, one of his most popular tunes is getting constant plays and she makes one dollar as the author. Stuff like that is why I refuse to use Spotify.

[BRW]

Relating to Docbop's story above ^ part of me thinks something's off about these figures. Because the royalties used to be pennies. J. Lo is making almost $800K annually from streaming? Then again, it requires 19 million monthly listeners...

 

Then again, who in their right mind actually listens to J. Lo? Apparently almost 19 million people per month...

[dazzjazz]

Easiest way to calculate Spotify rates is take the minimum wage in your country and divided it by 1000000.

 

I don"t use Spotify for this reason. I have a Qobuz account and they pay artists about 1 cent per stream, which is much higher.

[nursers]

Spotify's model is awful for artists, fully agree. The futile part of me has set up the forum playlist so that even at the shitty rates they pay, at least some of that pie is going to people here. Apple Music pays better but still really poorly as well I have a Spotify free account and never click on their ads so I feel I'm better off generating (tiny amounts) of income for artists whilst not giving Spotify a damn thing (except an extra listener for their stats to pimp to advertisers of course)

[Morrissey]

Vulfpeck is forever my hero for the $20,000 "prank" they pulled on Spotify -- having their fans stream silent tracks all day long.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2014/07/28/how-a-band-made-20000-on-spotify-from-5-minutes-of-silence/?sh=3083145818ed

[Bobadohshe]

The Spotify rate is pretty easy to figure out if you look at your statements from Distrokid or Tunecore or whoever your distributor is. It is indeed different in each country. If I look at my statements I can do the math. It ends up being approx. $0.0035 for a single stream, or $3.50 for a thousand streams.