Apple Music opened up in a bid to win credibility and more subscribers
Service says it pays one cent to artists for every song streamed on its service
Musician s union praised the move, saying a penny should be industry minimum
Spotify pays one-half to one-third of a cent, but its users stream far more songs
Apple pays 52% of revenue to labels while Spotify pays roughly the same portion
Spotify boasts 155 million paying subscribers; Apple Music has some 72 million
Apple told artists that it will pay them a penny for every stream from a listener.
That is about double what Spotify pays its artists.
A movement has launched in the music industry for streaming platforms to pay artists more.
Apple Music is telling artists that it will start paying them one cent per stream, per a Friday report from the Wall Street Journal.
The company told artists the news in a letter, which was viewed by the outlet, that will be posted on the platform s artist dashboard on Friday. As the discussion about streaming royalties continues, we believe it is important to share our values, Apple said in the letter, per the WSJ. The company said it believes in paying every creator the same rate and that a play has value.
Chesnot/Getty Images
Apple Music pays music rights-holders a penny per stream on average, the streaming service revealed in a letter to artists, labels and publishers today (April 16), as first reported by
The streaming service s payouts come out of monthly subscription revenue from users. While the exact payout varies by subscription plan and country, the company said in the letter, which was reviewed by
Billboard, that it averaged a penny per stream for individual paid plans in 2020. The figure does not take family plans into account.
A penny per stream is roughly double Spotify s average rate of around one-third to one-half of a penny per stream. Both services pay rights-holders like record labels and publishers based on the share of total streams that their artists bring in, after which those rights-holders pay artists based on their agreements.
In Spotify’s case, someone is certainly getting paid, but with song royalties at an estimated $0.00348 per stream, it’s not the working-class recording artist.
As the music streams, artists see but a trickle in profits
Local musicians are seeking better payments from Spotify, other services
By Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff,Updated April 12, 2021, 3:43 p.m.
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Kevin McCord, the vocalist and guitarist for the band We Demand Parachutes, in his home studio with a laptop opened to his band s Spotify page. He would like Spotify to pay his band more money when people stream their songs, but he also welcomes wider audience that streaming affords.Jim Davis/Globe Staff
He may not be a household name, but Will Dailey makes a living as a singer-songwriter. Heâd be in much better shape, however, if Spotify would bump up the microscopic royalties it pays for the millions of times his songs are streamed on the global music platform.