How much does your music streaming contribute to the earnings of your favourite artistes?

I have been enjoying music streaming for a year now through Apple Music and I started to wonder today how do artistes make a living these days. How do the replay and the many, many times that I listen to their music contribute to their income?

Gone were the days when they can really earn by selling copies of their albums or CDs. But most people do streaming these days, or worse, illegally download bootleg copies of music without paying.

So how do they make money to survive?

I googled it and found this very interesting infographics from Information is Beautiful (what an interesting sounding site, I shall be checking them out more soon). Do go check it out in the website since it’s not so clear here. 

But we can see, as pointed out by YourEDM that:

Highest revenue per play

1st: Napster / $0.0167 per play 

2nd: TIDAL / $0.0110 per play 

3rd: Apple Music / $0.0064 per play 

4th: Google Play / $0.0059 per play 

5th: Deezer / $0.0056 per play 

6th: Spotify / $0.0038 per play 

7th: Pandora / $0.0011 per play 

8th: YouTube / $0.0006 per play  

To reach minimum wage of $1260

Napster / 90,000 plays 

TIDAL / 130,000 plays 

Apple Music / 230,000 plays (this will take me more than 2 years of continuous non-stop listening!)

Google Play Music / 250,000 plays

Deezer / 260,000 plays 

Spotify / 380,000 plays 

Pandora / 1.2 million plays 

YouTube / 2.4 million plays

And according to this article, buying CDs from the store may no longer be the best way for artistes to earn. What is best these days could well be buying downloads or CDs directly from their websites.

And for me who always would vie for the underdogs, what I could do is to stream their music as much as I can, as far as my data package and phone battery(!!!) will allow me.

Music has come a long way but it may not have caught up yet to the digital world of business. 

pearlie