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Artist's Income Per Spotify Play: Fraction of a Cent

iTunes Match pays $0.003 per play

By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff

Posted Sep 4, 2012 2:53 PM CDT

(Newser) – Some may call Spotify the savior of the music industry—but for lesser-known artists, it doesn't appear to be a cash cow. The Next Web reviews analyses of what bands are making from Spotify and Apple's iTunes Match, and the numbers aren't impressive. On Spotify, a band reports making $0.0097 per play, while on iTunes Match it's $0.0033. Because they're paying $50 to get their music on the services, they'd need 5,171 Spotify plays or 15,127 iTunes Match plays to break even. A web developer's analyses finds similar figures.

It's important to note that iTunes Match requires a user to purchase the song before gaining access to streaming. Still, for a relatively unknown band, those figures pose a serious challenge. "The moral of the story? If you hear a band that you love on your favorite streaming service, then buy their stuff outright from wherever you can find it," writes Matthew Panzarino. Otherwise, they may not be around long.
An Associated Press reporter demonstrates Spotify during a product review in San Francisco, Tuesday, July 19, 2011.
An Associated Press reporter demonstrates Spotify during a product review in San Francisco, Tuesday, July 19, 2011.   (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 16 comments
janelanejones
Sep 5, 2012 4:24 AM CDT
sooooo??? 50 lousy dollars to post their music? there's been shitloads of authors whose books never sell enough to cover the costs of editing, printing, and marketing so they actually owed the publisher. even when the books became profitable, the authors only earned a few cents on each sale. in the past music companies ate the costs of putting out CDs that never sold. so again, why the fuck are they whining about $50? sounds like they're getting a deal, especially since they get to bypass the music companies altogether to reach a large audience. and i'm not sure why a few hours in a studio making a song deserves millions of dollars anyway. they make their money performing at concerts, as they should. the rest of us have to put in thousands of hours of work to make anything significant so why shouldn't they?
Winston_Smith
Sep 4, 2012 5:10 PM CDT
If you can't get 5,000 people interested in listening to your song, you really should pursue another line of work. Back when the record companies controlled everything, the bar was much, much higher.
WiccanFerret
Sep 4, 2012 5:02 PM CDT
This is The Internet.   5,171 plays isn't really that much, and that's just for ONE song.  I could easily see that happening in a day, especially with Spotify's recommendation engine up and running.  This really makes me wonder why in the world some big guys don't have their music on Spotify.  

 
iTunes • song • musician • subscription music • Spotify • iTunes Match

 
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