Where does this come from, and can I check it?

Spotify's payouts have run at roughly three to five tenths of a cent per stream. The figure is taken from Spotify, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

Is this really a music fact?

Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

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The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

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A stream pays a fraction of a cent

Spotify's payouts have run at roughly three to five tenths of a cent per stream Streaming services put all subscription and advertising money into a pool and divide it by total plays, so a single stream earns a tiny share. Reported Spotify rates sat around 0.003 to 0.005 dollars per stream in the early 2020s, varying by country and plan. An artist needs hundreds of thousands of plays to earn a modest monthly sum. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Spotify

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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SoundExchange pays royalties for digital radio playsThe body splits non-interactive streaming money between artists and rights owners One song pays out through several separate streamsPublishing, performance, mechanical and sync money are collected differently America sets a fixed mechanical royalty per songThe rate for 2023 to 2027 is 12.4 cents for recordings of five minutes or less ASCAP was founded in 1914 to collect performance feesComposers pooled their rights so venues could be licensed in one deal Album charts now count streams as fractional salesBillboard treats 1,250 paid streams as one album sale in its ranking Streaming turned the collection into a subscriptionListeners stopped owning the files and paid for access instead

Tags: streaming, royalties, economics

A stream pays a fraction of a cent: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Spotify's payouts have run at roughly three to five tenths of a cent per stream. The figure is taken from Spotify, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a music fact?: Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.