Information is Beautiful has updated their comparison of artist payments on streaming services, estimating that 2.4 million plays on YouTube will net a whopping $1,472 for an unsigned artist. That's $0.0006 per play!
What's especially crazy is that streaming services say they are operating at a loss on each play, so YouTube is in fact losing $174 million a year streaming music, or 17 cents per user.
Some artists say they’re not earning enough from music streaming. But streaming companies like Deezer, Spotify and Napster are still making a loss. So how much do the streaming apps pay the music industry? And how does the size / popularity of a service impact the likelihood of musicians earning a living from it?
Updated June 2017 with new figures showing Spotify’s free tier is helping it grow faster than Apple Music.
They also compared the compensation for signed artists, which is not good, either.
• What streaming music services pay (Information Is Beautiful)
