What a stream is actually worth
Almost every figure you have read about this is wrong in the same way: it is quoted as a rate, and there is no rate.
The major services pay pro-rata. All subscription and advertising money for a territory goes into one pool, the platform keeps its share, and what is left is divided between rights holders according to their portion of total streams in that territory. Your per-stream figure is therefore an outcome you can only calculate afterwards, and it moves depending on how much everybody else got played that month. This is why every honest estimate on this site is a range.
Roughly where a dollar of streaming revenue goes
Approximate and deliberately rounded, but anchored to two real numbers rather than a feel. The services pay out roughly 70% of revenue, and of what reaches rights holders the split runs about 80% to the recording and 20% to the composition. On the publishing side that lines up with the statutory rate: under the Copyright Royalty Board's Phonorecords IV determination, the all-in songwriter rate for US interactive streaming is 15.3% of service revenue in 2026, rising to 15.35% in 2027. That 20% is then split roughly half and half between mechanical and performance in the US, UK and Canada, though some territories divide it 65/35 instead.
Two things follow from that picture, and they are the whole reason this handbook exists.
- About a fifth of the money paid out on your song is on the publishing side, and it does not reach you through your distributor. It reaches you through The MLC and your PRO, or it does not reach you at all.
- Your distributor's cut comes out of the master share only. A distributor taking a percentage is not touching your publishing, which means nobody is collecting it unless you registered.
It depends far more on where than on how many. On the recording side Spotify has tended to land around three to five tenths of a cent per stream, Apple Music around seven tenths to a cent, Tidal higher still at over a cent, and YouTube lower — as little as a tenth of a cent on advertising-supported plays. The publishing side then adds roughly another one to three tenths of a cent for the writer, on top and from elsewhere.
The single biggest variable is not the platform, it is the listener: a play from a paying subscriber is worth somewhere around two and a half to three times a play on a free tier. Two artists with identical stream counts can be paid very differently. Use the bottom of any range you are given, and never plan around the top of one.
If two artists each get 10,000 streams, do they get paid the same?
Not necessarily, and often not. Payment depends on the territory those streams came from, whether the listeners were paying subscribers or on the free tier, and what deal sits between you and the service. Ten thousand streams from subscribers in one country can be worth several times ten thousand streams from the advertising tier somewhere else. It is another reason the honest answer is always a range.
Nothing here is legal, tax or financial advice. Rates, statutory splits, platform rules and organisation fees all move, and every figure was checked in September 2026 against at least five independent sources. This is written from a United States starting point. If something is wrong, tell us on the forum and it gets fixed.