Free tool

Spotify royalty calculator

Enter your monthly streams to see what they pay you once everyone else has taken their share: your distributor or record label, your bandmates, your co-writers and your publisher. It covers Apple Music, YouTube and Amazon Music too, and shows what the same streams would earn you under a record deal.

How many streams a month?

Who releases the recording?

Label services deals vary. Use the share in your contract.

New major-label deals averaged a 23.3% royalty in the UK in 2021. Producer royalties usually come out of it too.

Your share of the recording is less than 100% if you split it with bandmates, a producer or anyone else.

Who wrote the song?

Your share of the song comes from your split sheet with any co-writers.

What you earn from streaming, and what you don’t

Every stream pays two separate pots of money. One is for the recording (often called the master). The other is for the song itself, the music and lyrics, and goes to songwriters and their publishers. Who gets each pot depends on who owns the recording and who wrote the song:

  • You wrote the song and released it yourself. You get both pots, less your distributor’s cut (if it takes one) and your co-writers’ shares.
  • You’re signed to a record label. The label collects the recording money and credits you a royalty, typically around a quarter of it. You’re only paid once your advance and recording costs have been paid back. Your songwriting money is separate, so you still get that if you wrote the song.
  • You perform the song, but someone else wrote it. You only earn from the recording. All of the songwriting money goes to the writers and their publishers.
  • You wrote the song, but someone else recorded it. You only earn songwriting money, and only if your song is registered so it can find its way to you.
  • You played or sang on someone else’s track. You get whatever your agreement says, often a one-off fee, or a small royalty for a producer or featured artist. Services like Spotify don’t pay performers anything directly for on-demand streams: the money goes to whoever owns the recording. (Radio-style services are different: performers are paid through organisations such as PPL in the UK and SoundExchange in the US.)
  • Your songs aren’t registered. The songwriting money is still paid out, just not to you. Unclaimed money is eventually shared out among other songwriters and publishers: PRS for Music, for example, starts sharing out money it can’t match after a year.

What happens if you sign with a record label

A traditional record deal pays you a royalty: a percentage of what the label receives. The UK Competition and Markets Authority’s music streaming study found that new artists signing with the major labels got an average royalty of 23.3% in 2021, up from 19.7% in 2012. So for every £1 the label receives from your streams, about 23p is credited to you.

Credited isn’t the same as paid. Your royalties first pay back your advance and recording costs, plus anything else your contract lets the label recover, such as part of the video costs. Until that’s done, you receive nothing from the recording. In the regulator’s worked example, a 25% royalty worked out at an effective 19% over ten years, once a producer’s royalty and those costs were taken off.

To put it in numbers, the regulator estimated that 12 million UK streams a year would earn an artist on a major label about £12,000, and that fewer than 1% of artists get that many. Across all UK artists signed to the majors, average UK streaming income was about £2,000 a year in 2021.

Label services deals sit in between. You usually keep ownership of your recordings and a bigger share of the income, in return for less money up front. Terms vary a lot, so the calculator lets you enter the share from your contract. We’ve set it to 80% to start with; change it to match yours.

Distributors leave you the most. Many charge a yearly or per-release fee and take no cut of your royalties; a few take 9 to 15%. Our distribution cost calculator works out which one costs you least.

Songwriting money: the second pot

Songwriters and publishers get a smaller slice of streaming money than the recording side. The CMA found that in 2021 they received 15% of UK streaming revenue, against 53% for the recording side, with the streaming services keeping the other 32%. In the US, the rate for songwriters and publishers is set by the Copyright Royalty Board: 15.1% of a streaming service’s revenue in 2023, rising to 15.35% in 2027 (Music Business Worldwide).

The calculator uses the UK split to estimate the songwriting money: about 28 cents for every dollar paid out for the recording.

Register your songs, or you won’t see it. In the UK, PRS for Music collects songwriting royalties from streaming. In the US, you need a performing rights organisation such as ASCAP or BMI, and The MLC for mechanical royalties. A publisher or publishing administrator can do this for you.

Co-writers split the song by the shares you agreed, so write them down on a split sheet when you write the song, not when the money arrives.

Publishers collect your songwriting money and pay you a share of it. The CMA found the major publishers paid their songwriters 84% on average in 2021, so that’s the calculator’s starting point.

Spotify’s 1,000-stream rule

Since early 2024, Spotify only pays recording royalties on tracks that have had at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months, from a minimum number of different listeners that Spotify doesn’t publish (Music Business Worldwide).

The calculator spreads your Spotify streams evenly across the number of tracks you enter. If one track gets most of them, it may still earn even when the average says it won’t.

How much each service pays per stream

No streaming service pays a fixed amount per stream. Each month they share out a pot of money by each track’s share of all the listening, so what a stream is worth depends on the listener’s country and whether they pay for a subscription (Ditto Music). The calculator uses the averages that independent artists and other master owners were paid in 2024, from Duetti’s 2024 Music Economics Report:

Service Recording, per 1,000 streams Song, per 1,000 streams (estimate) Recording, per stream
Spotify $3.00 $0.85 $0.0030
Apple Music $6.20 $1.75 $0.0062
YouTube $4.80 $1.36 $0.0048
Amazon Music $8.80 $2.49 $0.0088
Other services Tidal, Deezer, TikTok and the rest, at the all-services average $3.41 $0.97 $0.0034

Recording: what independent artists and other master owners were paid on average in 2024, from Duetti’s 2024 Music Economics Report. Song: estimated from the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s music streaming study, which found songwriters and publishers got 15% of streaming revenue in 2021 against 53% for recordings.

If you use Spotify’s Discovery Mode, which promotes your tracks in exchange for a lower royalty, the report found you’re paid 30% less on the extra streams it brings in.

Where these figures come from

  • Duetti’s 2024 Music Economics Report, reported by Digital Music News (January 2025): what independent artists and other master owners were paid per 1,000 streams on each service in 2024.
  • UK Competition and Markets Authority, music streaming study (November 2022): how streaming money is split between recordings, songs and the services, record deal royalty rates, recoupment, and what publishers pay songwriters.
  • Music Business Worldwide: Spotify’s 1,000-stream rule (December 2023) and US songwriter rates (December 2022).

We use music industry sources and don’t rely on figures published by the streaming services themselves. We check the rates once a year. Everything here is an estimate to help you plan, not financial or legal advice: for a contract you’re about to sign, talk to a music lawyer.

Releasing your music?

See what each distributor would cost you before you upload: our music distribution calculator compares 12 of them on how often you release and how much you earn.

Common questions

How much does Spotify pay per stream?

Spotify doesn’t pay a fixed rate. On average, independent artists and other master owners received about $3 per 1,000 streams from Spotify in 2024, or $0.003 a stream. Songwriters and publishers get roughly another $0.85 per 1,000 on top, shared between them.

How many streams do I need to make $1,000 a month?

At Spotify’s 2024 average, about 333,000 streams a month if you own the recording and your distributor takes no cut. If you also wrote the song and collect your songwriting money, about 260,000. On a record deal with a 23% royalty, about 650,000 if you wrote the song, or 1.4 million if you didn’t, and only once your advance has been paid back.

Do I get paid if I didn’t write the song?

Only from the recording, and only if you own it or have a royalty in your contract. The songwriting money goes to the people who wrote the song.

Do I get paid for tracks with under 1,000 streams on Spotify?

Not for the recording: Spotify only pays recording royalties on tracks with at least 1,000 streams in the last 12 months. Songwriting royalties are collected separately.

Why is my distributor’s statement lower than this?

The rates here are averages. If more of your listeners use free accounts or live in countries where subscriptions are cheap, each stream pays less. Check too whether you’re using Spotify’s Discovery Mode, which pays less on the streams it brings in.

Is the calculator free?

Yes. There’s no sign-up, and you can copy a link to your results to share them.