What are your streams actually worth?
A range, not a number. No major platform except Apple Music publishes a per-stream rate, and the real figure moves with listener country, subscription tier and your distribution deal. Anyone quoting you one exact number is guessing with more confidence than the data supports.
100,000 streams on Spotify, at an estimated $0.003 – $0.005 per stream.
That is the master share only — and it is not the whole song.
A per-stream rate describes the recording, and the recording is paid by your distributor. The same 100,000 streams also generated royalties on the composition, which come from entirely different organisations and are paid only if you are registered with them:
- Mechanical royalties — Generated by the reproduction of the composition on every single stream. Collected by a mechanical rights body — The MLC in the US — never by your distributor and never by a PRO.
- Performance royalties — A stream is also a public performance of the composition. Collected by your PRO, and split into a writer’s share and a publisher’s share — the publisher’s half often goes unclaimed entirely.
This is why the number on a distributor dashboard and the amount a release actually earns are two different figures. Neither is wrong; the dashboard is just only showing you one of the three.
Estimated rates, by platform
| Platform | Per stream (est.) | Per 100k streams |
|---|---|---|
| Spotify | $0.003 – $0.005 | $300 – $500 |
| Apple Music | $0.007 – $0.01 | $700 – $1,000 |
| YouTube | $0.0008 – $0.008 | $80.00 – $800 |
| Deezer | $0.0011 – $0.0064 | $110 – $640 |
| Amazon Music | $0.001 – $0.007 | $100 – $700 |
| SoundCloud | $0.005 – $0.012 | $500 – $1,200 |
Platforms this calculator deliberately excludes
These are missing on purpose. A per-stream figure for any of them would be a fabrication, so here is the reason instead of a number.
- TikTok
- TikTok pays per new video that uses your track — around $0.03 each — not per play. A stream count is simply the wrong input, so no number is shown rather than a wrong one.
- TIDAL
- TIDAL's payment model changed when Direct Artist Payouts was discontinued, and no current per-stream figure is reliable enough to publish. A made-up number here would be worse than none.
- Bandcamp
- Bandcamp is direct sales, not streaming. You set the price and keep roughly 82–85% of it, so there is no per-stream rate to calculate.
- Beatport
- Beatport is a download store. One sale is $1.49–$2.49 split according to your distribution or label deal — a different calculation entirely.
Rates last verified 2026-08-28, from cross-industry research. Every figure is an estimate and a range — treat the output as an order of magnitude, not an invoice.
Find out which of the three you are actually collecting.
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