As a person listening to music on Spotify without publishing any, they might expect maybe 50 cents, a dollar, or maybe even two dollars from every stream. But unfortunately, this isn’t how much Spotify publishers are actually paid for their songs. They actually only seem to be earning less than a cent. How come?

Spotify has two different payments made to the owner of the song or recording, a recording royalty and a publishing royalty. A recording royalty is when the money is owed to the rightsholders, and is paid to the artists through the distributor, or record label. A publishing royalty is when the money is owed to the songwriter and/or owner of the song, and these payments are sent to the publishers, mechanical agencies, or collecting societies based on the geographical area and if it’s legally allowed. Rightholders receive their royalties whenever an eligible song has been streamed on Spotify.

According to Spotify Support, artists and songwriters usually get paid once a month. When and how they get paid is determined by their agreements with their distributor or record label for artists, and collection societies and publishers for songwriter royalties. Spotify pays rightholders according to streamshare, then pays artists and songwriters based on their agreements. Since Spotify doesn’t know of the agreements that songwriters and artists sign with their labels, so, Spotify Support cannot answer for many rightholder’s payments because of their payment coming out to be a specific amount on a specific date. Spotify calculated the payment by subtracting the money from ads and subscriptions they collect but don’t keep, like taxes, credit card fees, and more, then, the rightholder’s revenue is determined by streamshare.

So in conclusion, Spotify artists and songwriters get paid based on many different values. Based on area, labels, agreements, and more, is how they get paid and the amount.