How Much Does Spotify Pay Per Stream in 2025
You know the music industry’s shifted towards streaming. What you might not know is how much you get paid per stream. Read on to find out what Spotify pays per stream in 2025, what pays per stream are, and how you can maximize what you’re earning from your music.
What is a Spotify “pay per stream”?
Simply put: a Spotify “pay per stream” is the amount you get paid when your song is streamed for at least 30 seconds on Spotify. You will also only get paid by Spotify once you’ve reached your first 1,500 streams.
How Much Does Spotify Pay Per Stream?
In 2025, Spotify is paying artists $0.003 to $0.005 per stream. That means 10,000 streams of a song would earn you ≈ $30–$50.
Why is there a range for how much artists make on Spotify? Let’s explain that below.
How Does Spotify Pay Its Artists?
Spotify utilizes a 70/30 pro-rata split to pay its artists. This means that Spotify:
Collects its revenue from both premium and ad-supported users
Pools that revenue
Distributes 70% of that revenue to the music’s rights holders and keeps 30% themselves.
The payout for how much a musician earns on Spotify also depends on that pay period’s streamshare relative to all streams on Spotify, and does not include any fees taken by labels or managers. The stream’s country of origin can also affect your payout.
That’s a lot to keep track of, so let’s keep it simple: even if your payout rate fluctuates, you can use the range for how much an artist gets paid on Spotify to set goals and build music business strategies.
How Does Spotify Pay Artists?
Unless you are completely self-distributed, Spotify will pay you through your rights holder (label / music distributor) and not deposit money directly into your bank account. This is why it’s so important to choose your music distributor wisely – they ensure you get paid quickly, fairly, and accurately.
Spotify Payouts by Number of Streams
How Much Does 1,000 Streams Pay on Spotify? $4.37
How Much Does 100,000 Streams Pay on Spotify (Ex: World News – “Don’t Want to Know”)? $437
How Much Does 1,000,000 Streams Pay on Spotify (Ex: Russ – “Recognize”)? $4,370
How Much Does 100 Million Streams Pay on Spotify? (Ex: Don Toliver & Doja Cat – “Lose My Mind”)? $437,000
How Much Does 1 Billion Streams Pay on Spotify? (Ex: Alex Warren – “Ordinary”)? $4,370,000
How Much Money Can You Make on Spotify?
That depends on whether you're a music hobbyist, indie artist, or major artist.
Major artists are household names – think Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, or Kendrick Lamar. A hobbyist is someone who’s earning 4,000 streams or less per song they release. The music isn’t generating much attention or profit, and that’s okay. You release and distribute music simply because you enjoy it.
Indie artists are those earning 5,000-500,000 streams per track and, as you can imagine, the range of money they earn is equally massive.
At TuneCore, we frequently see our artists rise through this range with the help of TuneCore Accelerator, smart distribution strategies, and excellent social media content. Take Avery Sunshine as an example.
It’s not impossible – and you don’t have to do it alone.
Start Earning Money on Spotify
With TuneCore and TuneCore Accelerator, it’s possible to earn real money on Spotify.
You’ve seen the numbers. You know how many streams you need to earn the amount you want – get with us and join the platform that generated 21 billion new streams in 2024 and helped 1 in 5 artists advance to a higher streaming segment.