Which Streaming Service Pays The Most? You’ll Be Surprised

Streaming royalties are a completely moving target, and what’s reported as the average payment today will certainly change tomorrow. The reason is that there are so many variables that go into calculating a stream payment. That said, the chart below from Statista provides the gross payouts to labels per stream from each major streaming service. Please note that these are averages based upon streams across multiple tiers of a service (if it has them).

A big surprise is that XBox Music pays the most by far at 2.7 cents per stream, followed far behind by Rhapsody at 1.6 cents per stream. No surprise that YouTube pays the worst at .074 of a cent and Pandora at .134 cents per stream. Spotify is third lowest at .397 cents per stream.

All that being said, these are averages. Two artists with the exact number of streams will be paid different amounts for sure. Why? Here are just some of the factors that determine royalty, and even these vary per streaming service:

• If the service is interactive (like Spotify) or non-interactive (like Pandora). Interactive pays a lot more.

• The tier most of the streams are in. Paid subscription tiers pay a lot more than advertiser-driven tiers.

• the country that most of the streams come from. Many countries has different advertiser and subscription rates.

• The time of year of the streams. If advertising is involved, the rates are higher during the Holiday season than in the summer.

• The advertiser. High end advertisers like Gucci pay more than Walmart on ad-driven tiers.

• The record deal the artist signed with the label. How much of the money collected from the services to the artist depends on the royalty split agreed upon.

As a result, you can take a dozen artists each with a million streams and all of their royalty checks will be different. What’s more, probably none of them will reflect the average rates of the chart below (especially if a label is involved).

Still, averages are the best way we have to at least get a rough comparison of the payouts between streaming services, but take the numbers with a grain of salt because things are different in reality.

You will find more infographics at Statista