I didn’t stream a single song from Taylor Swift this past year on Spotify. Yet, I seemed to have paid her royalties.
Spotify Wrapped is a yearly social-media phenomenon, a holiday message from the music-streaming service that tallies who and what we listened to most during the year. My top artist was Galcher Lustwerk — Pitchfork, the online music publication, called his latest album “an understated landmark of underground house” — with my top track being “Parlay,” an eight-year-old song that hit Spotify just last year.
For the record, I respect Swift as an artist and generally have a favorable opinion of her music when I hear it, but I don’t play it myself. The only song of hers I can name off the top of my head is “Shake It Off,” first released almost a decade ago.
When I read Billboard magazine’s estimate that Swift’s music will earn $131 million from Spotify for 2023, I started wondering: Just where is my monthly payment going, and is Swift getting any of it?
How Spotify calculates royalties
Spotify does not report exact figures for royalties, so I used the best available numbers to estimate. The 17-year-old Swedish streaming service pools money it gets from listeners by plan type and distributes it based on total streams by that plan’s subscribers. For example, Spotify’s Premium Individual plan creates a different pool of money than the Premium Family plan.
I’m on the Bundle Hulu Premium plan, which is no longer offered to new subscribers, and I streamed around 200 tracks each month. The average on that plan was 935 tracks per month, which is how much someone would have to listen to for their royalty contributions to only go to the artists they stream.
What percentage of royalties did Spotify pay Taylor Swift?
In the year ending in September, Spotify received about $13.87 billion in total revenue. The company says it pays out “nearly 70%” as royalties, which would be the average of all subscribers worldwide. Taking 70% of total revenue comes out to $9.7 billion. The estimated $131 million in royalties Taylor Swift’s music earned from Spotify is 1.3% of $9.7 billion, so I’ll assume she received 1.3% of all Spotify royalty payments.
Taylor Swift is paid as both the composer and performer of her music, and also owns the master recordings of the “Taylor’s Version” of her albums. That means she collects the majority of those royalties. (She shares more of the royalties for streams of the original versions of those albums with Shamrock Holdings, which bought the master recordings after her original music publisher, Big Machine Records, was sold.)
How much did I pay Spotify, including my share of royalties?
I paid $123.88 to Spotify in 2023. Revenue is calculated differently for each plan, as is the percentage of revenue used to pay for music.
Between January and September of last year, Spotify reported getting an average $5.69 for each Bundle Hulu subscriber. Taking into account the price increase in September, the monthly average for the year would rise to around $5.82. So, Spotify received around $69.84 from me last year. Dividing content cost by revenue gives the percentage of revenue spent on content. It was lower than I expected, only around 50% for the premium plans. However, it was much higher for the bundles — more than 85% for my plan.
So taking 86.1% of my $69.84 means I contributed $60.13 toward music last year. The rest went toward Spotify’s overhead.
How much did the artists I listen to make?
Spotify’s privacy policy allows users to request their own streaming data, so I was able to use a full year’s worth of my own listening history, from mid-December 2022 until mid-December of 2023. It has been reported that Spotify requires a user to listen to 30 seconds to count a track as streamed for payments. After removing streams under 30 seconds, I had listened to 2,404 tracks.
Using the per-track estimate of half a cent, those tracks turned into $12.02 in royalties, or roughly 20% of the $60.13 that I paid into the pool to be distributed. The other $48.11 went to royalties for music that other people streamed. That means 80% of what I paid into the pool to be distributed as royalties went to other artists.
Since Swift scooped up around 1.3% of Spotify’s royalties, that means I contributed around 63 cents toward her $131 million in royalties from Spotify even though I didn’t listen to her for one second last year. She ranks sixth in artists I paid the most to.
Final Tally
So here’s how my $123.88 in total payments breaks down:
$54.04 was not included in reported revenue. Went toward Hulu for the bundle, credit card processing fees, and other pre-revenue expenses.
$9.71 was used by Spotify for other expenses, such as research and development.
$60.13 was paid out for content
$12.02 to the artists I listened to
63 cents to Taylor Swift
$47.48 to other artists
Some people saw thank-you videos from their top artists in their Spotify Wrapped. Even though I paid more royalties to Swift than to the country singer-songwriter HARDY, he sent a heartfelt thanks after a successful year. I didn’t hear from Taylor. Nor did I hear from Weird Al, who thanked his fans for streaming his songs more than 80 million times — enough, he said, to buy a sandwich.
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FAQs
Spotify announced on social media early Friday evening that "The Tortured Poets Department" released overnight had since become the most-streamed album in a single day, and Swift became the most-streamed artist in a single day in the streaming service's history.
How much money does Taylor make off Spotify? ›
The estimated $131 million in royalties Taylor Swift's music earned from Spotify is 1.3% of $9.7 billion, so I'll assume she received 1.3% of all Spotify royalty payments. Taylor Swift is paid as both the composer and performer of her music, and also owns the master recordings of the “Taylor's Version” of her albums.
Does Taylor Swift have to pay to sing her old songs? ›
With regards to Taylor Swift, she only owns the composition of her earlier albums; she does not have the rights to her masters. From a practical standpoint, this means she is unable to sing her old songs without the permission of the owner of her masters, who, in this case, is Big Machine Records.
How much does Taylor Swift make per concert? ›
Taylor Swift: concerts, fans, merchandise, money
What is known is what she will pocket for each planned concert. According to Billboard, the artist has earned between 11 and 13 million dollars for each of the dates belonging to The Eras Tour.
Why Taylor Swift removed from Spotify? ›
Taylor Swift removed her music from Spotify in 2014 due to a dispute over compensation for artists. She believed that the streaming service didn't adequately value the work of musicians, particularly in terms of the revenue they received per stream.
What motivated Taylor Swift to take her music off Spotify? ›
Spotify's subscription tier pays higher royalty rates to artists than its free tier. Artists like Swift have criticized Spotify and similar sites in the past for paying low royalty rates. Spotify denied Swift's request to keep her music off its free tier.
Who is the highest paid person on Spotify? ›
Since last updating this list last month, K-pop band BTS has been replaced by Kanye West thanks to the release of his 2024 album VULTURES 1. Taylor Swift is still the queen of Spotify, with over 81 million lead streams, putting her total earnings at over $327 million.
Is Taylor Swift the richest celebrity? ›
Among other celeb billionaires who made the cut – including Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Oprah Winfrey and "Star Wars" creator George Lucas – Swift was ranked at No. 14 with a net worth of $1.1 billion. Lucas topped the celebrity billionaires list with a whopping net worth of $5.5 billion.
How much money is 1 billion streams on Spotify? ›
Snoop Dogg unveils the stark reality of streaming economics, disclosing a mere $45,000 for a billion Spotify streams in a surprising revelation on the Business Untitled podcast. As the industry grapples with evolving royalty structures, questions arise about the accuracy of artist earnings in the digital age.
How much does it cost to hire Taylor Swift to sing? ›
According to the research, acts like Dave Matthews Band, Bruce Springsteen, Justin Bieber (ugh), Justin Timberlake, and Taylor Swift are the most expensive to book, with an estimated rate of $1 million-plus per performance, while it'll run you around $125,000-$175,000 for “Happy” singer Pharrell.
Who owns Taylor Swift's original album masters in 2024? In March 2020, Scooter reportedly sold Taylor's masters to a private equity company, Shamrock Holdings, for $300 million. At the time, Taylor released a statement to her fans on Twitter, where she revealed that she attempted to buy her masters back.
What does "stolen version" mean in Taylor Swift? ›
Taylor Swift's first six albums are referred to as the “stolen” albums for fans of Taylor Swift. They get the name of the stolen version because Taylor Swift does not own this music. They are her thoughts, emotions, feelings and lyrics, but it isn't her work. Once they become re-recorded they are then Taylor's Verison.
How much do Taylor Swift dancers get paid? ›
The estimated earnings for backup dancers during Taylor Swift's Eras tour ranged between $1,200 and $2,500 per show. However, it's essential to recognize that the salaries for backup dancers exhibit variability, influenced by factors such as location, the nature of the tour, and other pertinent considerations.
How much do Taylor Swift tickets cost? ›
Most of the cheapest tickets are priced between $1,500 and $2,250. On Vivid Seats, the cheapest Taylor Swift tickets on these dates start at $1,368 and $2,227, respectively. The two resale vendors generally have similarly priced offerings, but this varies from show to show.
How much does Taylor Swift pay staff? ›
What is unusual is the amount. Swift has given a total of $US55 million ($84 million) to hundreds of her staff, including the road crew, caterers, dancers, and truckers. (The truckers reportedly received about $US100,000 each, along with handwritten notes of appreciation.)
Who is the 1 on Spotify in 2024? ›
The following list contains the most-streamed artists on the audio streaming platform Spotify. As of June 2024, American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift is the most-streamed artist of all time on Spotify, while Canadian rapper Drake is the most-streamed male artist.
Did The Tortured Poets Department break any record? ›
The latest record-breakers come after “The Tortured Poets Department” debuted atop the Billboard 200 with 2.61 million album-equivalent units, the second-biggest debut of all time (behind Adele's “25”).
Who has the most Spotify streams in a single day? ›
Taylor Swift and 'Tortured Poets' smash the Spotify streaming record On Friday — the day Swift released her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department — she smashed the all-time Spotify record for most album streams in a single day, with more than 300 million.
What is the most pre-saved album on Spotify? ›
Taylor Swift is already breaking records! Only one day ahead of the release of her highly anticipated 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, Swift broke Spotify's record for the most pre-saved countdown page album in the streaming services' history.
