Ever since streaming became widely accepted by fans and music professionals alike, there has been a constant discussion as to how much a stream is worth. Back when album-equivalent units were introduced, Billboard and Neilson infamously decided that 150 streams count as a song sale and 1,500 qualify as an album sale, but that doesn’t mean that the money paid out to artists follows those same guidelines.
To help fans understand how much artists are paid when their music is streamed, T-Pain came through on Tuesday night with an infographic that laid out the number of streams necessary for an artist to get paid one dollar on each streaming platform.
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According to T-Pain’s chart, extremely popular streaming platforms like YouTube Music, Pandora, and Spotify require 1,250, 752, and 315 streams respectively for an artist to be paid out just $1, while DSPs like Tidal, Apple Music, and Napster will reportedly pay artists a dollar for less than 130 streams.
“I see a lot of ‘well I guess I’ll use the best one’ and not ‘we gotta make our own,'” T-Pain commented after fans started responding to his tweet. “keep in mind, most artists don’t even get the whole $1. I’m just letting the up and coming know what the real is. I worked for mine and there are tons of ways around this if you move right”
In addition to being shocked by the payout rates of each streaming service, many fans were simply amazed that Napster is even still around in 2021, so check out some of the shocked reactions to T-Pain’s tweet below.
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