Pay stub: what 1,000,000 Spotify streams pays an independent artist

A million streams sounds like a career. On Spotify it is closer to a few months' rent, paid in two separate cheques that arrive through two separate pipes. Here is the full stub, with every assumption stated so you can change it.

Assumptions

1. No fixed rate exists. Spotify says listeners "pay for unlimited access, not per track", so it pays by streamshare: roughly two-thirds of music revenue goes into a pool, divided by each rightsholder's share of streams in each market (Spotify, Loud & Clear FAQ). Any per-stream number is an average after the fact.
2. Per-stream range: $0.003 to $0.005. This is a third-party estimate, which Unchained Music attributes to the Duetti Music Economics Report and Ditto data (Unchained Music). We treat it as the recording-side payout to the artist's distributor. Listener country and the free-to-Premium mix move it a lot.
3. The track clears the floor. Tracks with fewer than 1,000 streams earn no recorded royalties under Spotify's 2024 policy (MusicTech). At a million, that is irrelevant.
4. The artist wrote the song alone and owns the master. No label, no co-writers, no producer points.
5. Publishing uses the US headline rate. Songwriters and publishers are owed 15.3% of a US service's revenue in 2026 (Music Business Worldwide). Non-US streams follow other rules; we use the US rate as a stand-in.

Stub 1: the recording side (through a distributor)

The commission line uses CD Baby, which says artists "keep over 90%" after a one-time $9.99 single fee (CD Baby); 10% is the worst case that wording allows. The flat-fee line uses TuneCore's cheapest $24.99-a-year plan (TuneCore). TuneCore's pricing page names a 20% fee only for social-platform income, not for streaming. At this volume, the fee model matters more than the per-stream rate's last decimal: a percentage cut costs hundreds, a flat fee costs one dinner.

Stub 2: the publishing side (the song, not the recording)

Spotify pays song royalties separately from master royalties, through publishers, collecting societies and PROs, not through your distributor (Spotify, Loud & Clear FAQ).

Our estimate of the size. If roughly two-thirds of revenue goes to all rightsholders and 15.3 points of that is the song, the recording gets the other ~51 points. Song money is then about 15.3 ÷ 51.4 ≈ 0.30 times recording money. This is our arithmetic, not a published figure, and real Spotify US rates on bundled plans have been lower than the headline.

That all-in figure is two streams of money:

• Mechanical royalties (US). Collected by the MLC, which says DSPs cover its costs, so it pays out "100% of the royalties it collects" with no commission or admin fee (The MLC). A self-published writer must register works there or the money sits unmatched.
• Performance royalties. Collected by a PRO and split into a writer's share and a publisher's share, typically 50/50. A writer registered only as a writer collects only half of these (Soundcharts).

The whole stub

What we think

• Budget on the low end. The $0.003–$0.005 range is an estimate built from distributor statements, and, in our view, likely skews towards higher-paying markets. A catalogue heard mostly on free tiers or in lower-priced countries will land under it.
• Publishing is the money people forget. Roughly a fifth of the total on our numbers sits on the song side, and none of it arrives through a distributor by default. Register with the MLC and register as your own publisher at your PRO, or the stub shrinks.
• Pick the distributor by volume. Under a few hundred dollars a year, a one-time fee and a percentage cut can be cheaper. At a million streams, a percentage cut is the most expensive line on the stub that you can actually change.
• The real denominator is time. A million streams over a month and a million over five years produce the same stub. Divide by the months it took before deciding what it means for you.