The Best Streaming Platforms for Artists
What I would like to do today is offer some transparency into the world of streaming. Spotify has come under a lot of fire due to how little it pays artists. Especially with it’s new rule, that if you don’t get 1000 streams on your song within a defined time period, you see no revenue from it (not that it would be much to start with!).
It’s my hope that afterwards you begin questioning where you listen to music and how you get it. The reality is there aren’t many ways to get music where the artist will see a lot of financial gain from it outside of purchasing a physical copy, on their own website, or on a site like Bandcamp.
Here I will present what one stream pays me on each host. This number does change and isn’t consistent so I’ll provide more than one data point if it changes much. I’m not sure of all the details on why it changes but it does.
Per Stream Royalities By Host
Pandora .003
Youtube Red .0166, .0157
Youtube Audio .00168
Deezer .0038, .005, .0025
Itunes .7002, .8995 (these are individual track purchases and not streams)
Tidal .00996, .0156
Amazon Unlimited .012, .006
Spotify .006, .00003, .004
Apple Music .006, .004, .0025
Instagram/Facebook .005, .000004
Tiktok .001
Qobuz .045
Tencent .000669, Netease .0008
Comments
After investigating this, I decided to no longer upload my music onto Instagram/Facebook, Tiktok, Netease, or Tencent. I’ve never been a fan of Facebook and it’s incessant data collection. Both Netease and Tencent pay so little in comparison that it might as well pay nothing. In addition, I’ve heard of artists getting a ton of streams on some of these international platforms and not being able to get their money.
What services to use
I think services like Qobuz and Tidal are the best for streaming. Qobuz is my own choice. My Qobuz discography
The QUALITY of the soundfiles are greater on Tidal and Qobuz. Other streaming services don’t offer the same no loss files; you get less audio compression with these services. Apple is somewhat better at this than Spotify. The only issue with Qobuz is not all of the artists are on there (of course, not all artists are on Spotify either).
I’d say about 80% of my own streaming royalties come from YouTube, especially YouTube Red. At the same time, I’m not the world’s largest fan of YouTube either.
I don’t think people should be using Spotify when much better options exist. Some of my music is on there because it contains the largest market of viewers. However, at some point in the near future I think it’ll basically become pointless for any small artist to upload their music to Spotify. The platform will be consumed by AI generated music, bought playlists, and so forth. This will be to the detriment of both listener and artist alike. Real artists music will get completely lost in a sea of AI-generated nonsense. Many artists are seeking QUANTITY over QUALITY, some people make a new track each week, courtesy of a template and generic material.
Spotify earns their money through ads and subscriptions. Independent artists don’t have much of a way to fight the machine. Even if they pull all of their music from the place, it won’t amount to much because Spotify earns it’s income via the larger artists (Taylor Swift, etc). The best thing for artists to do is to tell fans to use other platforms or services (like I’m doing here). Another thing artists can do is have releases that are only on Bandcamp or platforms where they get paid something. Limit Spotify releases in some form or fashion.
A lot of people promote Apple Music as better, paying more. Yet, the numbers I’ve seen don’t really support this. It’s about the same unless I sell an individual track. Amazon unlimited sometimes pays more, but not always or even most of the time. Once again, I don’t know what determines the final payout. The only difference is you don’t have the 1000 stream requirement with Apple and Amazon.
My opinion is if you don’t want to switch streaming services, and don’t want to purchase physical copies, listening to music through Youtube is kind of the best way. Why? There is no 1000 stream play requirement. YouTube is probably not going away any time soon. I don’t know of anyone that has suddenly had their songs removed from their Topic Channel. Topic Channels are usually where the artists song uploads exists. I have heard numerous examples of people’s songs or entire albums being removed from Spotify. This is due to bot attacks, things out of people’s control and not necessarily nefarious actors. I could go on about the detriments of even YouTube, but I’ll refrain for now.
If streaming is your thing, I recommend either Qobuz or Tidal. However, maybe check to make sure some of your favorite artists catalogs are on there.
If you want the artists to receive all or most of the proceeds, then you can purchase tracks from Bandcamp (On Fridays, they get 100% of the proceeds). It’s what I’ve started doing with artists I like.
I realize most of us don’t have the budget to purchase individual copies of every song and album we want. However, this does ensure artists make the most from their work. It also gives you ownership that can’t be taken away. Artists music can be removed from a platform’s catalog for no reason and then you will have lost access to it. This further becomes a problem when music is re-mastered. The original version is often better with older music and now the streaming service only has the re-mastered version. You miss out on some of the dynamics of the original release.
