Short answer
Roughly $0.003 to $0.015 per stream, depending on the platform, the listener’s country, the subscription plan and your distribution deal. Among the figures published by royalty-calculator sites and distributors, Tidal sits at the top and Spotify and YouTube Music at the bottom. The gap between the cheapest and the most generous platform is about five times, and the gap between countries on a single platform is larger still.
One caveat comes before any table: Spotify, Apple Music and the other services do not pay a fixed amount per play. Most pool revenue and split it by share of total streams. A “per-stream rate” is just the pool divided by the streams after the fact, so it moves every month.
Per-stream payout by platform
| Platform | Per stream | Per 1,000 streams | Model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tidal | $0.012–$0.015 | $12–$15 | Paid subscribers only |
| Apple Music | $0.006–$0.010 | $6–$10 | Paid subscribers only |
| Amazon Music | $0.004–$0.008 | $4–$8 | Subscription and ad-supported |
| Deezer | $0.004–$0.007 | $4–$7 | Artist-centric weighting |
| Spotify | $0.003–$0.005 | $3–$5 | Pro-rata, free tier included |
| YouTube Music | $0.001–$0.008 | $1–$8 | Wide gap: ad-supported vs. Premium |
These ranges combine figures from several royalty-comparison pages, among them Groover, FWD Music, SoundStash, Alera and Chartlex. The pages disagree with each other. YouTube Music appears as $0.001–$0.002 in one compilation and $0.002–$0.008 in another. Apple Music appears as $0.006–$0.010 in one and $0.008–$0.010 in another. We show the widest range any of them reported, so treat each row as a band rather than a price.
AnalysisThe ranking is more reliable than the numbers. Every compilation puts Tidal and Apple Music above Spotify and YouTube Music. The usual explanation is structural: services with no free tier pay out of subscription money only, while Spotify’s and YouTube’s pools also carry free, ad-supported listening. The exact dollar figures should not be used to forecast income.
Why the same stream pays different amounts
- Pro-rata splitting. Spotify says royalties follow stream share: your share of total streams in a market determines your share of that market’s royalty pool.
- Listener’s country. Subscription prices and ad revenue differ by market, so the pool per stream differs too.
- Plan type. A stream from a paying subscriber and a stream from an ad-supported listener do not draw the same revenue.
- Your deal. Distributors take a cut or a fee, and labels pay artists a contractual share of what the platform pays the label.
- Artist-centric rules. Deezer weights streams differently depending on the artist and how the track was found (see below).
Top countries: where a stream is worth the most
Platforms do not publish country-level rates. The figures below are estimates from third-party compilations, mostly for Spotify, and they differ from page to page. Treat the order within the top group as uncertain; the distance between the top and bottom of the table is the part that holds up.
| Market | Estimated per stream | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Norway | $0.0058–$0.0068 | Top of range |
| Switzerland | About $0.0060 or more | Top of range |
| Iceland | About $0.0055–$0.0058 | Top of range |
| United Kingdom | About $0.0048 | Upper middle |
| United States | About $0.0039–$0.0048 | Upper middle |
| India | About $0.0008–$0.0009 | Bottom of range |
| Nigeria | About $0.0005 | Bottom of range |
The same compilations describe a spread of nearly six to one between the richest and poorest markets: an artist with most listeners in Norway earns several times more per stream than one whose audience is concentrated in Nigeria or India. They attribute the gap mainly to higher subscription prices and ad revenue in wealthy markets.
AnalysisFor an independent artist the practical point is audience mix, not platform choice. A million streams from Nordic, Swiss and US listeners and a million from low-price markets can differ in income by a multiple. Spotify for Artists and your distributor’s dashboard show where listeners are; checking the country split before comparing platforms is more useful than comparing headline rates.
What is changing in how streams are counted
Spotify says it paid more than $11 billion to the music industry in 2025, and its Loud & Clear report says it pays by stream share. Deezer has moved toward an artist-centric model. According to royalty explainers such as LabelGrid’s, tracks that reach 1,000 monthly streams from at least 500 unique listeners can have each stream count double in the royalty calculation, and non-music noise audio is taken out of the pool. Deezer’s own announcement is the source to check for the current rules.
Tidal has also experimented with fan-centered and direct-to-artist payments, and critics of the pro-rata system argue that it favors the biggest catalogs over smaller artists with loyal audiences. Which model wins is not settled, and each service can change its rules.
What this means in practice
Before
Musicians compared platforms by a single per-stream number, often quoted as if it were a published price.
Now
Payouts are a pool split by stream share, with country, plan type, distribution deal and, at Deezer, artist-centric weighting all shifting what a stream earns.
Why musicians should care
Look at your own statements. Divide what you were paid by the streams on each platform and each country over a few months. That figure, not a headline range, is the one to use for planning.
What we could not verify
- Official per-stream rates. None of the platforms publishes one.
- Exact country figures. The numbers in the second table are third-party estimates and the sources do not agree on them.
- Whether the ranges hold month to month. Pools and streams change, so the rate changes.
