This streaming royalties calculator shows how much money your streams make. Pick a service, enter the number of streams and the share of the money that reaches you, and it gives a range in dollars. The rates under it are averages of what rights holders were actually paid, and every one links to the report or the platform page it came from.
How to use the streaming royalties calculator
- Pick the service: Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Tidal, Deezer, SoundCloud or Pandora.
- Enter your streams, for one song or your whole catalog.
- Set your share. If you release through a distributor that keeps nothing, leave it at 100%. With a label, put in the royalty rate from your contract.
- Read the range. The low end is the recording royalty, and the high end adds the US songwriting royalty where it is published.
Why the streaming royalties calculator gives a range
No streaming service pays a fixed amount per stream. Spotify, for instance, pays by streamshare: it adds up all the streams in a country in a month and splits the money it owes by each rights holder’s share of them. So the value of one stream changes with the country, the month, and whether the listener pays or hears ads. Every per-stream rate you see, including those in the streaming royalties calculator, is an average. It is simply the total paid divided by the streams.
The recording and the song are also paid separately. Whoever owns the master, usually a label or the artist through a distributor, gets the recording royalty. Publishers and collecting societies get the songwriting royalty and pass it on to the writers. Spotify says about four-fifths of what it pays rights holders goes to the recording and one-fifth to publishing. For more on the different payments, read our guide to the types of royalties in music publishing.
Streams you need for $1,000
At the recording rates in the streaming royalties calculator, this is roughly how many streams it takes to earn $1,000 for the master owner:
| Service | Streams for $1,000 |
|---|---|
| Amazon Music | about 114,000 |
| Tidal | about 147,000 |
| Apple Music | about 161,000 |
| YouTube Music | about 208,000 |
| Deezer | about 208,000 |
| Spotify | about 333,000 |
| Pandora | about 400,000 |
The figures come from Duetti’s Music Economics Report, which looked at what independent master owners received in 2024. Pandora is the US statutory rate for free radio plays. Duetti links the higher rates to bundling (Amazon Music comes with Prime) and to the lack of a free tier (Apple Music). Still, a lower rate on a service with more of your listeners can bring in more money in total.
Who gets the money
Streaming services pay rights holders, not artists. As a result, your share depends on your deals:
- DistroKid charges a yearly fee and passes on 100% of earnings, according to its pricing page. TuneCore also takes no commission on streaming, but keeps 20% of earnings from TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
- CD Baby charges per release and keeps 9% of digital revenue, so set your share in the streaming royalties calculator to 91%.
- A label collects the recording royalty and pays you the rate in your contract, usually after recouping any advance.
Songwriting is collected separately, through a publisher, a performing rights organization and, in the US, the MLC. Nobody collecting it? Then it sits unclaimed.
Rules that cut streaming royalties
Since April 2024, a track on Spotify needs at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months to earn recording royalties. The rule does not apply to songwriting. Deezer, on the other hand, gives double weight to streams of artists with at least 1,000 streams a month from 500 listeners, so smaller artists earn less per stream than the average there.
AI music gets extra scrutiny. Deezer found that up to 85% of the streams on fully AI-generated tracks in 2025 were fraudulent, and it strips such streams out of royalty payments. It is also adding a switch that hides fully AI-made music from search. In the US, a man who ran AI songs through up to 10,000 bot accounts got 18 months in prison in October 2026: read how the AI streaming fraud case ended. In short, only real listeners pay for long.
Ways to earn beyond streaming royalties
For most independent artists, streaming royalties are one income line among several. Sync licensing, commissions, sample packs and music for creators can pay more per track than streams do. Our guide on how to make money with AI music covers four realistic routes. And if you stream on Twitch, Kick or YouTube yourself, the streamer earnings calculator does the same maths for subs, ads and tips.
Making music for a video, a game or a stream instead? Mubert Render makes an original instrumental from a text prompt in seconds, at the exact length you set.
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