The list is not actually sorted from highest(best) pay per stream to lowest(worst) pay per stream; it appears to be in a random order. The correct order if organized from best pay per stream/streams to get 1k to worst pay per stream/streams to get to 1k would be: 1) Tidal $0.013/76,924 2) Apple Music $0.01/100,000 3) RU-vid Music $0.008/125,000 4) Deezer $0.0064/156,250 5) Amazon Music $0.004/250,000 6) Spotify $0.0033/303,030 7) Pandora $0.0013/769,231
@@jappolicario3002 I just download music from RU-vid and play them, no ads, no music disappearing, no 10$/month. It’s less convenient to download music from RU-vid though than just using Spotify.
I had a lofi beat blow up last year and it got 3.5 million streams and the thing I learned was yeah it is kind of crappy that spotify pays so little, but if you have a couple of beats that are performing decently well, that’s really the key to being a successful independent artist. It’s all about having a rich catalogue that has potential to be playlisted, even if most of them don’t get playlisted.
In my experience, Spotify just seems more accessible for people to use. Apple Music is fine but it still has that sense of "exclusivity" in the air which turns some users off. I guess it really depends on someone's music platform preference
Nah. It's more about how the person consumes music. Your casual listener is way more likely to go for Spotify, with its playlist management, social and discovery features. An enthusiast who likes to "own" (I realise these days we actually own nothing with music streaming) every album released by their favourite artist along with lossless formats will opt for Apple Music. I disagree with Spotify being "more accessible". Unless you are talking music and the fact Spotify has some free access. Otherwise Apple Music is most places Spotify is and it's all about how you prefer to consume your music. Most prefer "tracks on demand" which is why Spotify does so well. Especially with younger generations.
@@j800r_aswell In my opinion, I only like Apple Music for the lossless audio and the better payment for artists. I tried Apple Music properly last time, but the discovery functions for some nice genres is just absolutely terrible. Spotify thrives with their AI playlists. If Spotify introduces their Spotify Platinum (lossless) subscription, I'm all in. No matter if it's a lot more expensive. I listen to music almost the whole day. :)
I prefer Apple Music for the better UI (at least on mobile.) Spotify's UI just isn't good. Lyrics UI looks horrible, some UI is hard to navigate... it's just not as easy to listen to the music that you want to listen to. Plus the Music app also includes music files imported from iTunes, so...
I actually would have thought they pay way less. I have Apple Music Family with 2 friends and my siblings. If we on average listen 2h/day/person and a song plays for an average of 2 minutes Apple has to pay artist 90€ and we are only paying 15 a month. And Apple has to provide all of the infrastructure on top of that.
People don't understand how important sound quality is to some people. Listening to music is not all about playlists and recommendations and how everything happens automatically for you. You don't have to be an "audiophile" to enjoy high quality audio. I also get infuriated listening to retards who only talk about "noise cancellation" when doing "headphone reviews", and only talk about loudness when talking about sound quality. They're the same kind of people who would talk only about cameras while reviewing smartphones.
An important difference he showed us but didn’t mention was the charts. Spotify peaked the tailed off rapidly towards zero. Don’t expect much more cash to come from them. Apple is keeping pretty steady. There should be way more rolling in as we go on.
2 key difference between the songs is the Spotify track blew up from a viral tiktok quite some time ago & the Apple Music song like I mentioned was placed in the huge Apple Music playlist and is still in it to this day
congrats on the morning brew shout out ! always appreciate a creator who sections off their ad reads, and this video was fascinating to watch. good job !!
Great job man. Even if the payout is quite limited, you still have the talent to repeat the process over again and even triple that amount for several years. Props.
True I need to promote other platforms, I usually mention Spotify when people ask me where to hear my music. Best money I’ve made from my music was people actually purchasing the downloads from Amazon
Im not an artist but this is great insight. I think as consumers we start using the platforms that give back to the artists the most. Would you like to see more people using apple music?
Or potentially get Spotify to provide better services for artists (potentially by indicating our willingness to pay more in subscription fees if they pay artists more). Spotify has a great service for consumers - it’s a sticky platform and a lot of people don’t want to switch.
Ideally no...because now you are giving over control to a technology that you have no control over and actually has rights to your property & control of your money.
The same way people get on long lines and campouts to get the new Jordans, Yeezys(used to be), & iPhones...is the same way people need to line up to get there fav artists new album. Hell people do it to get into concerts...so why not for music.
On Spotify, it also depends where the people are listening your music: you can make $17K per 1M streams if the plays are coming from South Korea. On the other hand, if your streams are coming from Turkey, you only get about $600 per 1M streams.
Back when people bought cds you’d get a dollar per cd. So if you sold 10 millions copies, 10 millions bucks and then you could tour and keep all of it . Now? Labels take your lowly from all your income and barely even pay you what you get on streaming platforms as if they can’t keep up with the numbers
Musicians are much better off than painters. No matter if a picture gets viewed a billion times, the artist does not get a cent. Musicians gets royalties all their lives and their estates keep getting them for another 70 years after death.
This is one of the most straight forward videos I’ve seen on RU-vid. Thank you so much for not beating around the bush or dragging it out. Great info 🤙
Spotify doesn't have to pay apple for hosting on app store.. they used to but not anymore. Only purchase made on the app are charged 30%. But if you notice you cannot anymore pay through the app for Spotify. Same goes with Netflix, Hulu etc etc streaming apps
Just streamed I Miss The Rain and it's soothing HipHop chill. Here's the thing, because you sound so much better at the Lossless level, in my car you got that 3peat triple play from me. At this point the Lossless experience is so far ahead of Spotify a lot of us just keep replaying our Apple Music Library. You're at the 16 Bit 48kHZ level. If you can level up to the Dolby Atmos surround sound sonic stratosphere, you'd get more streams. That's my 3¢ lol. 👊🏾
As expected the industry is very unfriendly when it comes to independent artists. Kinda sucks when we have all the platforms and the technology in the world but big companies will still promote old and already established artist's
This video really inspired me to try even harder to make music, I’m new to music produce and I don’t know any chords progression, I made some simple lofi last year and it was really hard and I didn’t know where to earn money from music for small artist, now I know the possibilities to make a living of it , thank you Ldre!❤
Hey, L.Dre, another aspect of this conversation is also the quality of the streamed music. Spotify is just now catching up to #HiFi standards (CD-Quality) for Premium and that's pretty sad when Apple Music is at all the way up to #HiRes (24-bit up to 192KkHz with proper equipment) lossless at every level. Yeah, LoFi is cool, too, right. It just seems that features are one thing, and while part of the experience, but when is the younger Gen going to 'listen' to music rather than just 'hear' it? We deal with this in our various degree programs constantly and it must be a learned trait - this can greatly influence those paying for music and making their voice much more potent in ensuring artists get their portion, too. Just a thought :) BTW, where did your get those nice Sound Treatment panels - dang nice.
Streaming platforms should definitely be paying the artists more, because without the artists those platforms literally have no product to profit from...!!! Great vid...!!! 👍
@@madeinjei... Then artists should curtail their _supplies_ until their _demands_ are met! And streaming payouts aren't based on government laws, but on company policies.
@@helloxonsfan There are laws put in place that limit the amount of money a label/publisher/distributer is allowed to payout an artist per quarter, there's also a minimum, working in the music industry is still a something you would file a w9 for and thus there have to be regulations put in place so that it doesnt get abused, and as an artist when youre working out your contract your almost never going to get exactly what you want because youre technically compromising with your investor.
@@madeinjei... The payout to artist was actually a deal negotiated by the major record companies & the streaming platforms back in the early days if streaming. It hasn't changed since. Record companies still get the bulk of the share, while artists still get a pittance.
@@helloxonsfan its way more complicated than that. look at the credits of the song and then add a few more people and those are all of the people that need to get paid for the song. The record label has to pay all that out and the artist gets a little because every year the record label gives out a loan the artist that must be paid back by the end of the contract and sometimes our pesky little artist goes and spends that money on shit not related to the actual production of the piece ( when I say shit I mean things other than basic living necessities) so if for example they invest $100,000 to you, your song makes $200,000 but you spent $90,000 then your doing $200,000 - $90,000 and thats just pay back the loan cuz everyone involved in the production has to get their payout / royalty so $110,000 can end up turning into like $30,000 - $40,000 if u as the artist arent careful with how u spend the money
It's funny because it is sponsored material where Videos about products or services that are independent because they are the creators of the video and there is some relationship with the product or service according RU-vid policy ❤
not gonna lie that's kind of a dumb play there. will you make more money; Probably, but you've also put yourself in a really small space meaning your opportunities to grow your platform as an artist are going to be virtually non existent, and if Tidal were to grow as big a Spotify it would only end up making Tidal have the same issue you have with Spotify.
@@madeinjei While your first point is obviously true (although "non-existent" is obviously a comical exaggeration), I see no reason to assume Tidal would change their remuneration model to be more like Spotify because they became more popular/successful. Moreover, and I accept I could have made this clearer in my original post, although it will probably seem pretty obvious when you read it, my comment was from a consumer's perspective, not a creator's.
nah. I'd rather have Apple Music than sticking to Tidal. Tidal and Apple Music's royalty is close enough but subscription price is way different. Tidal is expensive as hell and paired with the fact that they have way less collection of songs. Not to mention the number of subscriptions. As an artist who wants to earn more, I'd rather do business with a platform with many subscribers than in a platform that pays a little higher but has subscribers a fraction of the nearest competition. Also Apple music subscriptions has been increasing ever since after they launched the Apple One subscription which bundles every Apple's service. This was in fact the reason why I jumped from Spotify into Apple music and imported my Spotify playlist into Apple Music. It even become better after Apple launched the Lossless music in which Spotify is still yet to implement.
about 40k and 13k respectively on each platform based on 4m streams at the advertised rate. Actual price they paid out, based on streams and paid amount: Spotify rounded to $11700 and 4.5m streams thats .0026 opposed to their advertised .0033, which would take about 385k streams to get $1k. Apple rounded to $24200 and 4.5m streams again. Thats roughly .0054(rounded, it was 53777 with repeating 7) as opposed to the advertised .01, which would tkae about 185000 streams to get $1k. Moral of the story: giving guides like that is pointless because there will be this or that reason that you aren't being paid the full amount thats advertised
This is why as a musician I use Tidal for listening - I want the money I spend on music going to my fellow artists as much as possible. Thanks for the info and congrats on the streams!
Unfortunately that's not the case the money is going into licensing a decoding process which no one asked to encode in the first place.. Deezer and Qobuz might be better choices if you want money to go into hard work and not into shareholders.
@@absolutium The only way for songs to be legally allowed on streaming platforms is for those platforms to pay for the licenses for those songs. Another thing is that I see majority of the comments here only mentioning money without realizing that if the money is coming from listeners and the majority of listeners arent on Tidal, Deezer or Qobuz then youre gonna see a real difference in how much your making Quarter to Quarter because thats how you get payed out in the music industry. Also everyones convinced that Spotify is the shitty platform cuz of how much it pays out, but no one has considered that most other platforms dont have the same user base as Spotify meaning the dollar doesnt have to get split as many ways on other platforms.
@@madeinjei Well.. To be accurate Spotify is essentially giving the listener 1/4 of a song.. if you read my reply again your are going to notice the response is about technical licensing not administrative bs.
@@absolutium The technical licensing is apart of the contract you make with, or contract but in place by, your label / publisher. You cant divide the 2 into different categories because everyone's picking from the same pot
@@madeinjei That statement is how I know you have no idea what is being talked about.. Look at GoldenSound video regarding MQA.. come back with your findings.
Digital music was encouraged by labels to regain control as far as the money. Years ago, too many folks were making a fortune selling their own music from the trunks of their cars and online, thus cutting the distributors and labels out completely. When music distributors and record store chains statred going bankrupt in the late 90's early 2000's, I saw where this was going then.
Its actually not the case, Digital music was looked down upon by labels at first and seen as unprofitable. Long story short, labels started making money off of licensing artists to streaming platforms and then later had to figure out a way to make more profit once streaming blew up so streaming profits came into play with how payouts were dealt out.
It’s crazy that this popped before I’m releasing a song this definitely is motivating. I never get paid for my songs now it’s a time to start. So any type of pay 💰 is good in my book.
As an artist - obviously I would like to see us all get the bag that we deserve. Yet, I see y’all saying “we should be paid” but realistically looking, those companies are just trynna make money and not justice fighters. In today world there are so many artists and musicians that sadly, it would be so hard for those companies to pay everyone more than that.
I guess the way I look at streaming is it’s great for established artists because you keep getting money every time someone listens to your music vs someone buying physical media and then your income is over. For up and coming maybe it’s a little spare change. I dunno. I personally will buy a record from an artist I really like and then listen to their music on a streaming service. I very rarely sit down and listen to a record but at least it’s a way to support smaller artists. Can’t fight it so might as well embrace it and try to figure out how to make it work.
The reason is apple music is just for paid subscribers. So if you got 4 mill on Apple, all the 4 million listeners are paid. On the other hand if u got 4 mill on Spotify, more than half of them would be free listeners.
Remember when people bought music? Imagine if 4,000,000 bought that song on iTunes. Dude you’d be a millionaire set for life. At least for the average person.
Very true but also the main reason the Apple Music song got so many streams in the first place is because of the playlist it was in so it’s a different story. I somewhat agree that we are paid little bit the Spotify algorithm actually helps to introduce my music to people who don’t even know I exist
Damn. I was very close with Spotify and very far off with Apple Music, since taking 100k streams for $1k brings to $40k. So I subbed :) Anyway I knew these platforms didn't pay much but I thought they paid much much more, I mean artists release few songs a year or not even. I wish they paid more, they probably do pay more some artists that literally bring most of the users to the platform, still it sucks
Why don't they use a scale to pay more for first thousands stream and then a bit less the more to 100k+ until you reach plateau of $/stream. That would help smaller artists, and maybe help to redirect money from big names to smaller ones.
When the streaming services charge so much, and give so little, it's sickening. Same with TV streaming too.. just a joke. And they're all at it, there's no regulation. Value for money? pffft.. whatever. Just greed.
Great insight bro, thanks for sharing. That's very impressive to garner 4 million streams and profit from it but financially it's such a rip off to artist. They could at least give us a penny per stream lol However, I appreciate you encouraging artist to post their music that's sitting on their hard drive which can possibly lead to some decent revenue, hell I just withdrew $38 from Distrokid which was right on time cause my car was low on gas lol Seriously though fam I wish you more blessings and more success.
Guys, it´s super simple. Apple Music is PREMIUM ONLY. Spotify per stream fee is a mix of FREE and PREMIUM so no wonder it is lower. You need to compare PREMIUM with PREMIUM or FREE with FREE. Not PREMIUM with a blend of FREE & PREMIUM.
It's weird to see a Lo-Fi artist. As a "lofi connoisseur," normally the people that make it are very private. With potsu being my favorite lofi artst, I only know what he looks like
congrats (I'm following on spotify btw) - my opinion is it's a lot easier to promote on spotify than with apple music, being an unknown it's next to impossible to get heard on apple music. With spotify it's doable.
I've went back and forth about whether I prefer Spotify or Apple Music. Experience is pretty similar but I'll be going with the one that pays the artist more. Easy choice at that point.
Distrokid is convenient but they keep reducing my songs from 24hz to 16hz CD quality for Tidal because I don’t pay to be audiophile verified Seeing that they pay the best is it worth the $20 USD to be verified?
Spotify pays about 50% of their revenue to the artists I believe, that doesn't strike me as unreasonable. For most artists, streaming isn't their main source of income either, live gigs are. You could even argue that streaming platforms function as advertising for the artists which raises the question if artists are entitled to any payment at all. It could honestly be the right opposite.
Well Apple has other sources of income than apple music not like spoitfy. Also spotify has much more artists so their money needs to be spread along way more artists. There are 3 times more users but there are more than 3 times more artists on spotify than on apple music
I don't know how math, or logic for that matter, works where you're from for YT Music and Deezer to be where they are in the list, if the list is indeed from highest paying to lowest, mindblown
Of course I want artist to be payed more. But if I looked at my listening stats, and how much I pay for streaming. Then Apple Music is left with no margin of profit.
@@LDreTheGiant I know how much you make for each sign up. it's $10. It used to be $5. Since you like throwing out numbers... I'm curious about how much money that Distrokid affiliate link can bring in after promoting it for a couple years. I came across a RU-vid producer who was honest and said he makes more money from the Distrokid affiliate link than he does from the music he has on streaming site's. You need 25,000 streams on Spotify to make $100. You only need 10 people to sign up to Distrokid through your affiliate link to make $100. You do the math! LOL It's called the "Distrokid Affiliate" link hustle. LOL
@@notsogood9449 ahhhhh I see what you’re saying lmao yeah I guess that could be a good hustle last time I checked I have made like $23-25k from it over the past few years which ironically is the equivalent of 4 million streams on Apple Music lol but affiliate marketing in general is a whole other source of income. I still make a few hundred a month by just having my gear linked to Amazon in my description 🤷🏽♂️
i just thought i would give you some extra insight into the numbers. I've studied them myself. 1. like you said the free Spotify tier pays less royalty ( way less ) than the premium streams. also, the amount you receive from a stream depends on the country where the song was listened to. for example, a stream in the USA will pay more than a stream in a developing economy like India. 2. a big reason why a company like Spotify is paying out less than for example apple is due to the fact that for apple and amazon as well the streaming site is just a side hustle to keep people in their ecosystem. their core business isn't in music so they can make a significant loss on the music streamed. for Spotify, this is just not the case. if you look into the financials of Spotify they are basically always losing money. Tidal is also having big financial losses year over year. 3. just like the streams from free Spotify users the free trial users for apple music also have a lower payout per stream than the normally subscribed users. 4. its also important to mention that the average payouts per stream only are meant for independent artists, the label for big artists negotiates rates with the streaming services separately.
Apple does not sell Apple Music at a loss. They do choose to give a higher percentage of their Apple Music revenue to artists, which certainly impacts profit margins, but theirs is not a loss leader company culture. Spotify’s major advantage is global ubiquity without platform bias catering to a much broader population at all economic levels.
Always been an Apple Music consumer. I'm a traditionalist when it comes to my music and like to hold a collection. Whether that be physical or digital. Spotify is great for social features and playlists. Maybe even slightly better with discovering new artists. However, when it comes to music library management, Apple Music has them beat by a lightyear. Essentially, Spotify has no real library. Wanna organise your music? It's playlists or bust. Whereas Apple Music has all the same library management as iTunes. Meaning I have a stored library of many artists and their albums from Accept to Yes and everything in between. It must be remembered that Spotify have a free tier, that many if not most users will be using. This will be a huge reason why their payout is far less.
I think Spotify's payout is fair to be honest. I'm from Sri Lanka and Spotify is so much cheaper in comparison to other alternatives. I do have so much respect for Spotify for making music accessible to so many people as well. Spotify costs $1.44/mo individual and $2.30/mo family, whereas Apple $6.49/mo individual and $9.99/mo family. Students on Spotify pay less than a dollar $0.72/month. Apple can keep it's higher margins since many users who choose Apple music does so mainly because of the Apple eco system. Spotify targets towards its audience with it's free plans and low fees internationally. I've noticed how the prices are so much more higher in the US for spotify premium compared to Apple as well. So I guess Spotify has a team to look in to international pricing based on demand and the financial aspects of specific countries.
I believe that Spotify being in more markets and more paid subscribers means a large chunk of their subscribers are from low income countries where subscription fees are lower and the ad revenues as well so to compensate that they have a lower rate. Tidal being only available in high income countries pays the most. So the rate is decided by mix of paid subscribers from various income group countries. Ideally there should be different rate for streams from different countries to maximize artist compensation. RU-vid does it for its videos. So you get paid more if someone from Europe or North America streams your songs.
The value balances out to whatever the world currency is which is the US Dollar. 100 Yen = $1.00+/- meaning that the Spotify premium package in Japan would probably be around 1,000 yen+/-. I just looked up the cost for Spotify in India and the subscription plans work differently which seems to not only have to do with the value of the currency. You said the subscription fees are lower in low income countries but I really just comes down to the value of the currency and how much it costs to buy things. for example although the cost of spotify premium in india costs 119 Rupees the cost of a bottle of water in India is 30 Rupees +/-, which if u do a little math would be the equivalent of $10 in Rupee
@@madeinjei I mean cost of a water bottle is not Rs 30 its Rs 20 ( 25 cents ) for brands like Aquafina and Kinley. If you buy a full 15 bottle set it costs Rs 15 (19 cents) per bottle. I dont know whats that in terms of Purchasing power parity. So just like you said its Rs 119 which is approx $1.5 per month which impacts artists income. India doesnt even give you volume as competitors are way cheaper giving you music subscriptions at 1/3rd of the cost.
not sure what apple does but Spotify seems to claim that most of its revenue goes to the labels that provide the songs, if that is to be believed, the fight should be with labels. Apple already has overpriced hardware industry, Google has incentivised people's privacy so it really doesn't affect them at all. Spotify only has one thing going on(that goes with other platforms too). They also did the whole thing to get rid of the piratebay and illegal streaming. If we want artists to be paid more, we should probably be generous with the subscription we pay. We want free services and also want the benefits for the artist. I don't think in today's world, the artists depend on streaming or their album sales. Their main source of income is touring, and merchandise, we should be supporting them by sharing their music, attending their concerts, making them famous in our own way. (it is hard for new artists but this is what it's like). This debate is also very subjective. I have used Apple music, spotify and youtube music, and the only conclusion I have come up with is, apple's and youtube's algorigths are fucked. Spotify has the best algorithm out there. If you experiment with new music, spotify will dig deeper and find artists for you that you never heard of and thus promoting artists in a great way and it also has quality streams which do not exist in apple or youtube music, youtub'e algorithm is stupidly stupid, it will loop you into the same songs that you listened years ago and will not let you discover new artists if compared.
I believe producers think that getting underpaid from one source is undercutting talent and robbery, but the internet is a big place and posting music through multiple platforms is how it works. Would it make sense to pay $100 for a Spotify subscription when its a vast market? It works both ways and the streaming avenues are plentiful at a reasonable price. Video streaming services are similar yet revenue streams can be accessed from a garage compared to the hands on that it was 15 years ago. The real question is, if you didn't upload to the other service, would you get 9 million views?
whats up with yt music, i prefer to switch from spotify to yt, because of the benefit to minimizing commercials and you find artist there, which aren't on spotify/apple music because they release before streaming was this huge.
