Recently I have been doing a lot of research into streaming and the royalties/earnings it can generate for musicians. One of the reasons being is because I myself own the rights to a buzzing hit on the underground / internet hip hop scene. Using distrokid I have gained first hand access to information such as what the two major giants are currently paying per stream, on average Spotify is paying $.0030734967 per stream and Apple Music is paying $.0068986784 per stream.
Knowing this information and doing the math at how many streams it would take for the song I own to make me serious money I started wondering what artists like Drake are making from streaming. I know I am not the only one wondering this so that is why I made this article!
Key Drake streaming stats:
- First artist to hit 50 Billion streams.
- Drake has at least 10 Billion streams on Apple Music.
- Drake has at least 13 Billion streams on Spotify.
What are these stats worth?
All the different streaming sites have different royalty rates that have changed over the years and for the most part they have gone down instead of up. At the same time streaming rates have been going down, in contrast, Drake’s popularity has been increasing, so I believe using the current rates I have been seeing on my distrokid account will be a fair average for Spotify ($.00307) and Apple ($.0068). For the other streaming sites that account for the other 27 Billion streams that Drake’s music has generated, I will use the rough average of .005 that other music analysts use. Now that we have the rates lets answer how much money has Drake’s music been generating?
Apple Music
- Drake has at least 10 Billion streams on Apple Music; which would generate $68.986784 million in earnings.
- I was curious how much this meant Apple Music was paying out to Drake and his various labels a day. So I looked it up and found that the Apple Music app was officially released June 30, 2015 and they announced that Drake had been the first artist on their platform to hit 10 billion streams on July 19th, 2018. That means it took Drake 1115 days, to hit 10 billion plays! $68.98674 million divided by 1115 days equals on average, earnings of $61, 871.51 a day!
Spotify
- Drake’s 13 Billion streams on Spotify, using the current rate of $.0030734967 per stream, should have generated at least $39.9554571 million.
- Drakes first album was released June 15th, 2010 and the article stating he had at least 13 billion plays came out August 8, 2018. Thats 2,976 days to accumulate 13 billion plays / $39.9 million, which basically means Spotify is paying the Drake empire roughly $13, 425.89 a day.
Other streaming sites:
- The article I read about Drake being the first artist to accumulate 50 billion streams was published on August 8, 2018. As the article states, 27 billion of these streams came from other sites besides Spotify and Apple Music. Well there are over 100 streaming sites and they all have different royalty rates but an industry average when doing calculations like this for earnings, is $.005. Which means those 27 billion plays should have generated roughly $135 million!!!
- Using the same length of time that we did for Spotify, which was 2976 days since Drake dropped Thank Me Later. That’s $135 million divided by 2976 which equals out to $45, 362.90 a day!
TLDR;
- Drakes music generates around $120, 660.3 A DAY! That’s over $5,000 an hour!
- Drakes music has generated roughly $243.9 million in total streaming royalties from June 15, 2010 to August 8, 2018. I was curious so I looked it up and saw that it has been 69 days since the publishing/release of the announcement that he hit 50 billion plays. So I took the average amount his music is earning a day ($120,660.3) and multiplied it by 69 which equals out to $8,325,560.7. This means Drake’s music has generated over $250 million in total streaming earnings!
Finally:
I know a bunch of people are going to read this and be like “damn, Drake made a quarter billion off streaming! He’s making over $100k a day from streaming!” But no that really isn’t the case. That $250 million is being split up a whole bunch of ways;
- Universal Republic gets a 25% distribution fee.
- Aspire Music Group, Young Money, and Cash Money records all get a piece.
- Drake.
- Songwriters.
- Producers.
- Featured artists
Thats up to 8 different ways (including all labels) that the money is being split BEFORE taxes but at the end of the Drake is still making a huge amount of money from streaming daily. In general the point of this whole article is to show producers and rappers the power of streaming. Yes, you most likely won’t ever hit 50 billion streams but I know of plenty of quote on quote nobodies who have millions and/or tens of millions of streams and the whole point I am trying to make is that it stacks up.
Sidenote: I read an article recently about how Sting makes $2,000 a day from the song “I’ll be missing you” over 30 years after its release. Can you imagine how much “Drake” will be pulling in 30 years from now?
I don’t claim to be an authority on the subject matter, I am not a hip hop producer.