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The Biggest Streaming Earners In 2019 (So Far)

Streaming Revenue, Streaming Money, Streaming Music, Streaming earners

Streaming has changed the way artists make money, but that doesn’t mean the biggest stars of today have fallen on hard times.

When its the last time someone told you about buying an album? When is the last time someone who wasn’t a collector (vinyl, cassette) told you they bought an album? Unless your inner circle is filled with devoted, old school music fans the answer is probably not anytime in the recent past. We live in the age of digital, which means we live in the streaming era, and that evolution has changed the ways musicians make money.

Depending on who you ask, this is a good and bad thing. Newer artists, especially in the world of rock and metal, claim streaming has made it harder to earn money because fewer people are willing to pay $5 or $10 to purchase their music outright. On the other hand, artists who create strong singles have found that the ease of access that Spotify and similar platforms provide has lowered the barrier to discovery. Those artists still make far less per stream than they would if each play was tied to a sale, but high stream counts can prove more beneficial than sales over time.

Whatever the struggles for newer artists may be, those talents at the top of the industry hierarchy are continuing to rake in plenty of cash in the age of streaming. Understanding the math behind the streams is often a struggle, but Billboard recently uncovered the top 5 streaming earners of 2019 so far, as well as a rough estimate of just how much money they’ve brought in for their label and team.

1. ARIANA GRANDE
Total label streaming revenue YTD: $12.08M
Total audio and video on-demand streams YTD: 2.83B

2. DRAKE
Total label streaming revenue YTD: $11.29M
Total audio and video on-demand streams YTD: 2.58B

3. POST MALONE 
Total label streaming revenue YTD: $10.90M
Total audio and video on-demand streams YTD: 2.63B

4. JUICE WRLD
Total label streaming revenue YTD: $8.38M
Total audio and video on-demand streams YTD: 1.92B

5. BILLIE EILISH
Total label streaming revenue YTD: $7.93M
Total audio and video on-demand streams YTD: 1.89B

Billboard’s estimates are based on Nielsen Music data and other information as of the week ending April 18. It’s a month later now, but the top five most likely remains the same, only with larger play counts.

It’s important to note that the second figure under each artist’s name combines song and video streams. Audio streams generate more revenue than video streams, but YouTube is an incredibly popular platform for music.

The figures above cover the sound recording royalty that the record label collects and doesn’t include publishing.

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Spotify’s new Storylines feature looks like Instagram Stories for musicians

Spotify is working to empower artists, and it’s coming after Instagram’s most popular feature along the way.

With over 100-million premium subscribers, Spotify is already the biggest streaming platform in music by a wide margin. That kind of lead allows the company to work on expanding other areas of its business, and that includes making the platform more social.

Now testing on iOS and Android devices, Spotify Storylines provide listeners with behind-the-scenes information about songs direct from artists. The information is presented like an Instagram Story, with a carousel of cards featuring a combination of text and images that you can tap through. Android Police notes that the feature is only available on a select number of songs right now, including Sucker by the Jonas Brothers, and a handful of songs by Billie Eilish.

Here’s a look at Storylines in action:

At the time of posting, Storylines are only available to The Jonas Brothers, and Billie Eilish, and not every mobile user can see the functionality. Spotify most likely approached the artists directly for their participation in the program, and as of right now, there are no public plans to roll the feature out to more talent.

That said, industry analysts have long predicted that Spotify would move into more social and editorial content. Storylines would give artists a direct line of communication to their listeners, and the possibilities that line presents are limitless. Artists can detail the story behind a song, promote a tour, promote recordings, or even provide steps to joining their official fan club.

In a statement, a spokesperson from the company said, “We are always testing new ways to create better experiences for more users,” but did not confirm when the feature would be released more broadly.

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Spotify founder says “close to 40,000” tracks added to streaming service every day

The latest data point from Spotify’s founder reveals a hard truth about competition in the streaming age.

Spotify Founder and CEO Daniel Ek spoke with investors this week during a quarterly earnings call to discuss the latest developments at the streaming giant. Amongst the many tidbits of information shared, including the companies’ recent success crossing the 100-million paid user count, was the fact that nearly 40,000 new songs are added to the service each day. To be specific, Ek said:

“with more than 50 million tracks now available on Spotify, and growing by close to 40,000 daily, the discover[y] tools we’re building have never been more important to consumers and artists alike.”

Daniel Ek, speaking to investors on April 29, 2019

Let’s put that figure into perspective. Forty thousand tracks per day equal about 280,000 songs a week or around 1.2 million tracks per calendar month. In a year, this volume would add up to a whopping 14.6 million.

Therefore, at its current rate, every three-and-a-half years, Spotify will add over 50 million tracks to its library. Considering the platform currently boasts a catalog of roughly 50 million songs total, the current growth rate would double Spotify’s music library by 2022, and it could happen sooner than that.

To look at it another way, let’s accept that the average song is about three minutes long, or 180-seconds. With 40,000 songs added every day, Spotify is creating roughly 2,000 hours worth of new competition for clicks each morning.

If you listened to every song added to Spotify in a single day without taking breaks it would take you a little more than 83 days to hear everything. That’s almost three months of music being added to one streaming service each day.

Daniel Ek also added that the “number of creators that are engaging directly with Spotify’s platform continues to increase, growing to over 3.9 million” in the first three months of 2019. That figure refers to musicians and podcasters, both of whom are contributing to the overwhelming amount of content being added to the platform each day.

Artists reading this now may find themselves in a panic. After all, how can anyone adding music to the platform with a promotional juggernaut behind them hope to stand out in a sea of music far too large to ever be consumed in full? For them, Ek offers this data point:

“In Q1, we saw a 20% increase in the number of artists streamed on our platform year-over-year and a 29% increase in the number of artists with at least 100,000 listeners.

Daniel Ek, speaking to investors on April 29, 2019

The best chance most artists have of being discovered on Spotify is through appearances on popular playlists. We ran the advice of one playlisting professional on our blog last week, and we plan to share more in the weeks to come.

If Spotify’s catalog is growing at this unprecedented rate, it’s highly likely that the same can be said for Apple Music and Amazon Music, as well as their smaller competitors. Streaming may be helping the music business recover from its low point, but it’s certainly not helping developing artists make careers out of their work in the same way physical media sales once did. At least, not yet.

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Spotify crosses 100 million paid users milestone

The streaming war is far from over, but Spotify’s lead is growing with each passing day.

People are willing to pay for music. As funny as it sounds to hear that now, there was a time shortly after the dawn of the millennium where the industry wasn’t sure if that was still the case. The rise of digital piracy lead many to believe people were no longer willing to shell out cash to support recorded music, but premium streaming subscription services such as Spotify have proven that notion false.

This week, Spotify announced it has finally crossed the 100-million paid user mark during the first quarter of 2019. The streaming giant, which has long been the market leader for music consumption, added four million premium users in the three months ending March 31, a 4 percent spike quarterly and 32 percent over the previous year’s quarter. Ad-supported monthly active users now total 123 million, an increase of 6 percent on the quarter and 21 percent year over year. Overall, total monthly active users rose to 217 million in Q1, up 5 percent from the previous quarter and 26 percent year over year.

Spotify’s latest figures place the company’s total subscriber count at double that of its closest competitor, Apple Music. Apple CEO Tim Cook said in January that Apple Music hit 50 million subscribers at the end of last year.

Apple Music does, however, have a higher paid user count in the United States, which is the world’s largest market for music consumption. Apple Music is also growing faster in the US than Spotify. That growth may not be enough to overtake Spotify on a global scale, but it does show consumer preferences for streaming services are not yet set in stone.

Spotify’s advantage in the ongoing streaming war is its free tier. Apple Music requires a paid subscription, but Spotify allows over one-hundred million people a month to access its music library through a free tier that inserts advertisements in between songs.

Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal, and other streaming services have subscription numbers far below that of Spotify and Apple Music. So much so, that bringing up their paid user count in this conversation feels pointless. Still, with the right innovations, it is possible for anyone to rise through the ranks and become the next leading streaming service. After all, there was a time when it seemed like Netflix would reign over video streaming forever, but the recent news of Disney+ and its low monthly cost has made many to believe the service is in jeopardy of losing its position as the market king.

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Major labels demand ‘guaranteed money’ from TikTok owners

With current contracts set to expire this Spring, three of the biggest labels in the world are trying to secure additional revenue from the fast-growing social media platform.

The big three record labels — Universal, Warner, and Sony Music — are demanding more money for songs played on TikTok and its Chinese counterpart Douyin, setting up a showdown with the hugely popular video apps, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

All three labels have contracts with the app owners, ByteDance, that are set to expire this Spring. Negotiations for new agreements have reportedly been ongoing for months, but little progress has been made. 

If a deal is not reached in the near future, the labels may choose to pull their catalogs from the service, which would likely force TikTok and Douyin to remove existing videos and prevent new uploads containing music owned by the companies. That action would ultimately lead to a diminished popularity for the app, which could eventually kill the platform altogether. 

Since negotiations are private, it’s unclear what money is currently being exchanged between ByteDance and the labels with music on its platforms. The fight for higher payouts allegedly stem from the rising popularity of the apps, which has “emboldened” the labels to seek better royalty payouts. Figures are, again, not public, but sources claim the big three labels are seeking a big enough change to earn them hundreds of millions in “guaranteed money.”

Reports of the platforms’ popularity are accurate. TikTok alone has over one billion downloads across iPhones and Google devices worldwide.

TikTok’s argument against the proposed changes is that the company is not a streaming service and therefore it should not be expected to meet the standard royalty rates paid by Spotify and similar platforms.

Todd Schefflin, Head of Global Music Business Development at ByteDance, responds to the reports of negotiations with:

“TikTok is for short video creation and viewing, and is simply not a product for pure music consumption that requires a label’s entire collection.”

Speaking to the platform’s ability to help artists, Shefflin added:

“A short video on TikTok can become a valuable promotional tool for artists to grow their fan bases and build awareness for new work.”

Shefflin brings up a good point. The irony in this story lies in TikTok’s ability to raise the profile of up and coming artists on a global scale. Lil Nas X currently has the number one song in America with the Billy Ray Cyrus assisted remix to his viral hit, “Old Town Road.” The song, which was initially released in late 2018, rose in popularity thanks in large part to a series of videos created by users of TikTok. Here are a few examples:

Major labels may see themselves as needing more money from TikTok, but they may need the platform’s ability to raise artist profiles even more. Removing music catalogs from an app with over one billion users would hurt music marketing at every level, but it would especially hurt developing artists.

That said, the industry’s growing reliance on streaming revenue cannot be denied. The music industry grew 9.7 percent in 2018, thanks mainly to the rise of paid streaming services Spotify and Apple Music. That’s impressive, but compared to where the music business was in 1999, there’s still a long way to go before the industry as a whole can reach its former heights of success.

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Apple Music surpasses Spotify in paid U.S. subscribers

Spotify may dominate the global market, but Apple Music continues to grow at an alarming rate.

Apple Music has surpassed Spotify in paid U.S. subscribers, according to a new post from the Wall Street Journal, which further indicates that the war for streaming music dominance is far from over.

The article published earlier this week reveals Apple Music now has 28 million subscribers in the U.S. while Spotify trails with 26 million. The news post also claims that Apple’s streaming music service has been adding subscribers in the world’s biggest music market faster than its rival with a monthly growth rate of 2.6-3% compared to Spotify’s 1.5-2%.

Globally, Spotify remains the streaming champ, boasting over 96 million paid subscribers compared to Apple Music’s 50 million. Spotify has over 200 million subscribers on its free tier as well.

Apple’s main advantage over its rival are the 900 million iPhones in use around the world, each one with iTunes installed and a credit card on file. If consumers grow tired of Spotify or otherwise dislike the service, making the switch to Apple Music is easier than joining any other competitor in the field.

Still, the news that Apple Music has surpassed Spotify in the US comes as a surprise to much of the industry. Spotify has long been considered the Netflix of music streaming, and its recent acquisition of several podcast businesses and services , not to mention the recent Hulu partnership, has positioned the company for additional growth in the years to come. The fact Apple Music has now surpassed Spotify, at least in U.S. paid subscriptions, is sure to make investors a little wary of what the future may hold.

Apple recently announced plans for its own video streaming platform, which it will likely bundle with Apple Music. If that comes to pass, Apple’s streaming division will grow even faster than its current rate, which would shrink Spotify’s lead in the marketplace.

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Pre-Adds (Pre-Saves) are the new pre-orders, but is that a good thing?

Consumers are replacing pre-orders with pre-adds and pre-saves, but is something important being lost along the way?

Fast-rising pop sensation Billie Eilish will release her debut record, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, this Friday, but the teenager’s album is already being considered a massive success. Despite not yet being released, the LP has already accrued more than 800,000 pre-adds on Apple Music, which allows users to register to add an album to their streaming collection before it ships, with Eilish setting a new record for the service.

That volume of pre-adds for Eilish’s album is a sign of how the industry is continuing to evolve. Speaking to Music Business Worldwide, Apple Music boss Oliver Schusser said:

“While most services focus the majority of their efforts around playlists, Apple Music still emphasizes albums because we understand their value as a storytelling tool for artists to create context around their music.

To that end, pre-adds are great early indicators of engagement around an artist and the intention of the fans. To actively pre-add an album, much like the pre-order we invented with iTunes, means that the fan is excited about the content and wants to be among the first to enjoy it the moment its available. That kind of engagement is very valuable to an artist and to us.”

Spotify offers a service similar to Apple Music. The company’s pre-save feature allows users to register to have the album added to their library and to receive an alert regarding the content’s availability. The reliability of the notifications depend on how many pre-saves a user registers, but the content is always added as soon as its made available.

While the figures for Eilish’s album are great, pre-adds and pre-saves are not a perfect replacement for pre-orders. Schusser was right to say the numbers can tell a lot about excitement for a release, and they can also help predict initial performance, but the tools currently available to artists through streaming platforms do not provide context about their audience.

If a user pre-saves or pre-adds an album, what does the artist get? Do they know my name? Where I live? My email address? Do they receive anything other than a counter that tells them I am one of the however many people that have decided to request notification of their release becoming available?

Streaming services also do not offer any data that informs artists as to whether or not consumers who pre-save their release actually listen to it.

The real winner in the rising popularity of pre-saves and pre-adds are the streaming services offering them. By using that functionality, consumers are providing the platforms with additional insight into their listening habits. Their actions are strengthening the algorithms that recommend content and create playlists. Whether they know it or not, consumers are strengthening the services they use more than the artists they’re hoping to support.

Still, streaming is here to stay and there is no getting around that fact. If the industry is lucky, Spotify, Apple Music, and similar platforms will make more listener data available to them as time progresses. That seems more likely than a rise in royalty rates based on recent events, but it’s still not going to happen overnight.

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Spotify, Amazon, and more sue songwriters to prevent royalty rates from rising

Four of the largest music streaming services are appealing a ruling that promises to raise mechanical royalty rates by 44% over the next five years.

How much is a song worth? According to most streaming services, the answer is roughly $0.003 per stream. A new ruling from the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) aims to raise that value to $0.004 per stream, but Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, and Google disagree.

The four streaming giants are appealing the ruling that hopes to raise mechanical royalty rates by 44% over the next five years. Spotify, Amazon, Google, and Pandora have each filed separate appeals, with Apple the only major streaming player choosing to abstain.

The four companies also released a joint statement detailing their decision, which reads, “The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), in a split decision, recently issued the U.S. mechanical statutory rates in a manner that raises serious procedural and substantive concerns. If left to stand, the CRB’s decision harms both music licensees and copyright owners. Accordingly, we are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to review the decision.”

In a statement released today, March 7, the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) said that a “huge victory for songwriters is now in jeopardy” due to the streaming services’ filings.

NMPA President & CEO David Israelite commented:

“When the Music Modernization Act became law, there was hope it signaled a new day of improved relations between digital music services and songwriters.

That hope was snuffed out today when Spotify and Amazon decided to sue songwriters in a shameful attempt to cut their payments by nearly one-third.

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) spent two years reading thousands of pages of briefs and hearing from dozens of witnesses while both sides spent tens of millions of dollars on attorneys arguing over the worth of songs to the giant technology companies who run streaming services.

The CRB’s final determination gave songwriters only their second meaningful rate increase in 110 years. Instead of accepting the CRB’s decision which still values songs less than their fair market value, Spotify and Amazon have declared war on the songwriting community by appealing that decision.”

“When the Music Modernization Act became law, there was hope it signaled a new day of improved relations between digital music services and songwriters. That hope was snuffed out today when Spotify and Amazon decided to sue songwriters in a shameful attempt to cut their payments by nearly one-third.

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) spent two years reading thousands of pages of briefs and hearing from dozens of witnesses while both sides spent tens of millions of dollars on attorneys arguing over the worth of songs to the giant technology companies who run streaming services. The CRB’s final determination gave songwriters only their second meaningful rate increase in 110 years. Instead of accepting the CRB’s decision which still values songs less than their fair market value, Spotify and Amazon have declared war on the songwriting community by appealing that decision.

No amount of insincere and hollow public relations gestures such as throwing parties or buying billboards of congratulations or naming songwriters “geniuses” can hide the fact that these big tech bullies do not respect or value the songwriters who make their businesses possible.

We thank Apple Music for accepting the CRB decision and continuing its practice of being a friend to songwriters.  While Spotify and Amazon surely hope this will play out in a quiet appellate courtroom, every songwriter and every fan of music should stand up and take notice. We will fight with every available resource to protect the CRB’s decision.”


Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) Executive Director Bart Herbison also responded to the companies’ decision, saying:

“It is unfortunate that Amazon and Spotify decided to file an appeal on the CRB’s decision to pay American songwriters higher digital mechanical royalties. Many songwriters have found it difficult to stay in the profession in the era of streaming music. You cannot feed a family when you earn hundreds of dollars for millions of streams.

Spotify specifically continues to try and depress royalties to songwriters around the globe as illustrated by their recent moves in India. Trying to work together as partners toward a robust future in the digital music era is difficult when any streaming company fails to recognize the value of a songwriter’s contribution to their business.”

If the ruling holds, the 44% increase will be only the second substantial increase to mechanical royalty rates to pass in the last 110-years.

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Amazon introduces ‘Song ID’ to help smart speaker owners learn about music

Don’t know the name of the song you want to hear? Amazon’s new Song ID feature has the answer.

The smart speaker revolution is upon us. Last month, a new study from Adobe Analytics found that more than 1/3 of American consumers, 36% to be exact, own one or more smart speakers. That figure is expected to grow substantially in the coming months, and even further in the years that follow.

The upside to the popularity of smart speakers is that it leads consumers to listen to more music more often. A study by AudienceNet at the end of 2018 found that homes with smart speakers listen to 50% more music than homes without and that those same homes are 49% more likely to listen to music for more extended periods. They also listen to more playlists.

But there’s a problem: Many consumers don’t know the title of the songs they hear on the radio, and even more don’t know the artists who sing them.

When someone wants to hear a song on their smart speaker, they must ask for it. For Amazon devices, users often say, “Alexa, please play __________.” The device then searches for that song or artist and plays the track it believes the user wants to hear. It’s a great system that is far quicker than pulling a record from a shelf and placing it on a turntable or popping a CD into a boombox, but it only works if the consumer knows exactly what they want to hear.

Let’s say someone wanted to hear “Let It Go,” the popular song from the Disney film Frozen, but they couldn’t remember the name of the movie. That person could ask Alexa to play “Let It Go,” but there are at least 42 songs on Amazon Music and Spotify with that title. Which one would it choose? If it chose another version than the desired one, what could the consumer do?

To aide in educating consumers about the music they love, Amazon has introduced ‘Song ID.’ When enabled, Alexa will announce the title and the artist name before playing each song while you’re listening to a radio station, playlist or new release on Amazon Music over your smart speaker.

The optional feature for Echo devices can be enabled or disabled by voice at any time by asking Alexa to “turn on Song ID” or “turn off Song ID.”

In addition to making consumers aware of what they’re listening to, Amazon also hopes ‘Song ID’ makes users more comfortable talking to Alexa. The software does not have much a personality itself, but users who trust the device are more likely to use it for other things, such as ordering products from the Amazon store.

The new feature is live today across Amazon Music in the U.S. and works on Echo devices, says Amazon.

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50 million US consumers paid for streaming music last year, RIAA says

The latest report from the Recording Industry Association of America shows consumer interest in premium streaming music subscriptions is on the rise.

Numbers can be deceiving. When asked to discuss their growth, streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music will often quote their global user statistics instead of those related to a specific country or continent. That isn’t necessarily wrong by any means, but it can lead consumers and investors alike to perceive a company’s standing in a different light.

In January, Spotify announced it now welcomed over 200 million users every month. That figure, which refers to the platform’s total global user count, included 96 million paying premium subscribers. No further details were given related to where paying subscriptions came from, nor has any similar information been provided to the media since.

A new report from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has shed a bit more light on the streaming market. According to the study, 50 million US consumers paid for streaming music services in 2018. Use of such platforms rose 33% over 2017’s numbers, and it’s likely to grow further still in 2019.

“Tremendous output from the artist community fueled a historic milestone of 50 million subscriptions to music services, which in turn helped drive U.S. music’s third consecutive year of double-digit growth,” RIAA Chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier said in a statement.

“Rejuvenation in the industry means more opportunities to find and break new artists for fans to enjoy,” Glazier said.

Additional data found in the report reveals that 75% of music industry revenue now comes from various forms of streaming. Physical sales of vinyl records continued to increase, up 8% to $419 million, the highest level since 1988.

Unfortunately, other forms of physical media were not as successful. Revenue from CD sales are down almost 34%, to $698 million; music video sales fell more than 28%, to $28 million; and sales of “other physical media,” including cassette tapes, was off nearly 22%, to $9.6 million.

Total music revenue for 2018 totaled just under $10 billion — a significant recovery from the low of $6.7 billion in both 2014 and 2015 — but the industry is only back to a level close to what it was in 2007 when the total was $10.7 billion.

The RIAA did not comment on how the rising popularity of streaming services is impacting the lives of artists. The most popular performers have reported big earning from Spotify and the like, but many smaller and mid-size artists have found it harder to rely on recorded music to pay their bills.

Regardless, it appears the streaming boom will continue for the foreseeable future. Follow HaulixDaily on Facebook and Twitter for more industry news and insight.

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