Musician Trying To Understand How Spotify Knows How Much We Earn

[ChrsRowz]

How does Spotify know how much money an artist earns based on the amount of plays they get? Is there an algorithm that decides? 

[TreyAnastasio]

Hi @ChrsRowz,

Thanks for posting in the Spotify Community, and welcome!

I moved your post from Chat to the relevant Help board, where it fits better.

Spotify doesn’t pay artists directly according to a per-play or per-stream rate.

Rather, Spotify pays royalties to the rightsholders of the music, and the rightsholders then pay the artists and songwriters according to their individual agreements. You can visit this Spotify for Artists help article for more information about the two types of royalties (recording and publishing) that rightsholders are paid. 

Artists and songwriters choose their rightsholders (typically record labels, distributors, aggregators, and collecting societies), and make agreements on their music—including giving the rightsholders permission to deliver the music to Spotify. Each rightsholder’s share of Spotify’s net revenue is determined by streamshare, which is calculated by tallying the total number of streams in a given month and determining what proportion of those streams were people listening to music owned or controlled by a particular rightsholder.

Bear in mind that after the rightsholders receive royalties from Spotify, how much an artist or songwriter is then paid depends on their specific agreements with their rightsholders.

For more information about how artists on Spotify are paid, feel free to visit spotify.com/loudandclear.

I hope this helps; let me know if you have any other questions, and have a good day!

[geovanebento]

Great answer! 👏👏👏