Comparing artist compensation at Pandora, Spotify, Apple, and other streaming music services

“Based on information directly received from artists and indie labels, as well as various published sources, we can rank streaming music services according to their per-stream rate,” writes Daniel Sanchez in Thursday’s (7/1) Digital Music News. “With Microsoft’s Groove Music shutting down, Napster became king of streaming music service payouts…. On average, Napster now pays out $0.019 per stream.  To meet the monthly minimum wage amount in the US of $1,472, an artist would need 77,474 total plays…. Napster remains a profitable streaming music service…. Jay-Z’s streaming music platform, TIDAL … reportedly paid out $0.0125 [per stream]…. Artists on Apple Music would need around 147,200 plays to earn the US monthly minimum wage amount…. French-based streaming music service Deezer … [pays] $0.0064…. As with Napster, Apple, and Google, Amazon closely guards its user metrics. Earlier this year, The Trichordist found Amazon paid indie artists $0.0074 per play. That number has now plummeted to $0.00402…. Spotify pays most artists between $.003 and $.005 … for each stream.… Pandora [pays] artists $0.00133 on Pandora Premium….. YouTube [now pays] artists $0.00069. To earn the monthly minimum wage amount in the US, artists will need around 2,133,333 total plays on YouTube.”