this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2026
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Presumably because you are getting 70% of a tiny amount
It’s a bit complicated really. They distribute money all over the place, and then the artist gets paid.
It’s kind of the “industry standard,” which sucks, but Spotify pays out less than industry standard. I could go on a rant about how they suffocate indie artists to ensure major labels get their share, but I’ll spare you lol.
Do people who pay for spotify listen to so much that their £5 a month (or what the sub is) gets shared so widely that each artist gets almost nothing?
Lots of artists make millions, it's just that music is so easy to make these days that there is more artists and songs than ever, more music gets released in a day than in the entire year 1985, so you need to be somewhat vaguely popular to make decent money, you can't just make a few songs and expect to live off the royalties, there's 12 year olds releasing music these days
That's so bad
Why is it bad that more people can release music?
I would be curious as to how the income per view compare to 1985
So basically, it’s like this…
Spotify gets their subscription money and ad fees, keeps 30%, then the remaining 70% gets split between all labels, songwriters, publishers, etc., and smaller artists (no label, self-release) get a percentage of your plays in your “market.”
So you end up getting fractions of a penny ($0.004) per play.
Which would suggest over 1000 plays for that money to be shared across. Presumably people paying are heavy users so that could be pretty easy to get over a month. Especially with shared accounts.
So you are getting your "fair" share of that 70%. It's just being shared across so many different things.