Make Money With Spotify
Professional musicians have been making money with Spotify for years. But would it be possible for complete beginners and amateur music creators to make money with music and Spotify? Let's find out.
Earn $0.001 for each stream and after roughly 3000 streams you'll finally be able to pay for a cup of coffee. Spotify and music streaming might not be your best bet if you're looking for ways to get rich quick. But as you'll see there are actually people making decent money from Spotify and music streaming.
Read this page if you are interested in how to make money with Spotify and other music streaming platforms.
There are many ways to earn revenue from music streaming. You are probably familiar with most or all of these services already:
- Spotify
- YouTube Music
- Amazon Music
- Apple Music / iTunes
- Tidal
- Google Play Music
- Pandora
- SoundCloud
There's also Unlimited, SiriusXM Internet Radio, Slacker Radio, Deezer, iHeartRadio, Napster and many other music streaming services.
The point is you could be making money from all of these.. if you own the copyright to the music, and if people are interested in listening to the soundtracks.
How To Make Money With Spotify For The Complete Beginner
Spotify makes money from advertising (from their free tier users) and from paid subscriptions (paid and premium tier users). This money in turn will contribute to the payments towards rightsholders.
If you are an established musician you probably already are making money from streaming.
But what if you are not?
What if you are..
- unsigned
- self released
- a complete beginner or
- an amateur musician
Will you be able to make money from Spotify?
Google it, and you will learn a few things. Things like this:
Earn 70% rev share. Seems like Spotify pays out 70% of their rev to the rightsholder. Not too bad. This can of course change at any time and to be sure you should check with the original source (Spotify).
Make money from Spotify playlists. You can actually make a living from making Spotify playlists. How? You'll have to become a Spotify editor. In other words, you'll be working for Spotify as an employee. Not what we were seeking this time. There are other options if you would like to explore how to make money from Spotify playlists as well, but one is against the ToS and another is as a consulting business where you will be suggesting tracks for coffee shops, but realistically? But maybe not, pay for play is a thing apparently. Not interesting. Not something that will ever make you rich. Moving on.
Make music (the kind of music people will listen to) and generate millions of streams. How much will you make from Spotify? Official numbers are hard to find. A million streams a month could be enough to make a decent extra money on the side.
Earn $0.001 - $0.008 for one stream. The Guardian reports that its average Spotify payout for a stream to labels and publishers is between $0.006 and $0.0084 but also refers to another magazine claiming that average payment to an artist from the label portion of that is $0.001128. But who said getting rich was going to be easy?
Make money from home with Spotify. It's not impossible, even for non-musicians. The payout for each stream is incredibly low, and you'll need millions of streams. There's a dude making thousands of songs and recordings, uploding them to Spotify, and he's making a living from Spotify now according to Inc Magazine. 19.000 songs and 73 stage names, one guy. He is using CDBaby to sell and stream his music everywhere.
Other options. Recording nature sounds. Traffic sounds. Any sounds. If you're into making money with Spotify this is yet another alternative to explore. We're not going to.
How To Really Make Money With Spotify (Even If You Suck At Creating Music)
For most non-musicians it is probably better to find something else to do with your time.
For amateur musicians and stubborn non-musicians, your best bet could be this route:
- Make music and audio. Tons of it, low quality. Or make a few popular tracks, high quality. Make as many recordings as possible. Songs, sounds, noises, talks, anything that is appropriate for audio streaming.
- Go live. Self publish or use a service called CDbaby.com or something similar
- Promote your music (this is optional). Or do some kind of arbitrage: Spend $0.0001 in ad cost per stream, if you're making $0.001 per stream that would eventually make cents.
Who Will Be Making Money With Music Streaming And Spotify?
For the most part, Spotify earnings will be handed out to
- Rightsholders. Start your own label and sign huge artists. Huge potential right there.
- Talented musicians. Great musicians can obviously make money from Spotify, unless they are dumb enough to sell their talent to rightholders for cents.
- Creative people. Creativity goes a long way, and is a great trait to have in any business endeavor. Making money with streaming through Spotify is not impossible for non-musicians. A lack in musical talent can be substituted by creativity. Cleverness and imagination is all it really takes.
That said, for most non-musicians and amateurs, there are probably far better options than Spotify if you are interested in making money online.
Or perhaps you'd like to challenge yourself:
Reserve a couple of evenings for testing-purposes, and record a few tunes, sounds, tracks, sound tracks, capture the sound of nature, the noises of traffic, or something. Self release or publish through any suitable service as the one mentioned.
And then, some beautiful day, you too will experience the thrill of making your first $0.001 in the music industry.
