As the competition among streaming music platforms intensifies, many continue to wonder whether or not artists can support themselves on song streams alone.
The current federal minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 per hour. The minimum wage may vary from state to state, but $7.25 per hour is the lowest an employer can pay unless the employee works in food service. Waiters and waitresses typically make far less, and the sooner you learn that the sooner you will begin to treat them better.
When you crunch the numbers, a person working full-time for minimum wage grosses roughly $1256.67 per month.
Most musicians hate to think about money. Artists like to believe that their pursuit of creative endeavors is pure. Many will tell you they are not in it for the money, but let’s be honest: it all comes back to money. You may be the greatest songwriter ever to live, but unless you can pay your rent and feed yourself, your career will only last a short time.
Consumers don’t understand money as it relates to the music industry. They know that there are record labels and people in positions of power with millions of dollars to spend, but they also know that many artists are broke. The industry sells music as a lifestyle brand where everyone lives their best life, complete with jewelry and the latest tech. Still, most industry professionals live quiet lives that look nothing like what is sold in marketing campaigns. If you were to ask the average listener how much money their favorite act makes, they would tell you a figure rooted in their love of that talent. “Jack is so good,” they might say, “so I assume he’s doing well.”
In reality, Jack is living couch to couch whenever his band isn’t on the road. Jack doesn’t have health insurance, and he cannot remember the last time he saw a dentist. Jack is barely scraping by, but he doesn’t complain because he’s living his dream.
With more people than ever choosing to stream music instead of purchasing it, we recently began to wonder how many streams it would take to earn minimum wage. Finding the answer proved difficult because every service has its own royalty rate, and many streaming platforms use a sliding scale that fluctuates daily. After checking several sources for the most up-to-date rates, we ran the number and found the answers. Check it out:
A solo independent artist keeping 100% of their streaming revenue needs at least 100,534 streams per month (on Tidal) to earn minimum wage. On Spotify, the current most popular streaming service, that same artist would need 287,568 streams to see a similar return.
Remember: The number in the chart above are for solo artists. A four-person band would need more than a million monthly streams on Spotify to earn minimum wage. Depending on their management and label cuts, that figure may be even larger!
Artists around the world continue to fight for higher per-stream royalties, but as of right now, no service seems likely to budge in their favor. Stay tuned.
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