The average per-stream royalty rate across major streaming platforms is 0.003 to 0.005 dollars, meaning an artist must generate more than 200,000 streams per month to earn a minimum wage equivalent from streaming alone. For the vast majority of professional musicians who are not in the top one percent of streams, streaming income is a fraction of their total earnings, supplemented by touring, synchronization licensing, and merchandise.
Legislative proposals to reform streaming royalty structures have been introduced in Congress but face significant opposition from streaming platforms that argue higher royalty rates would make their business models unviable. The fundamental tension is that streaming platforms have created enormous consumer value by providing access to essentially all recorded music for a monthly fee that previous music consumption patterns would have cost ten times as much.
