Streaming Royalties Calculator | How Much Is Your Music Really Worth?

Enter your stream count, choose your platforms, and get an instant earnings estimate across Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, YouTube Music, Audiomack, and more — plus a full breakdown of per-stream rates for every major DSP.

The honest truth about streaming income: most artists have no idea what their streams are actually worth. You see a number in your dashboard — 50,000, 200,000, a million, but turning that into a dollar figure requires knowing which platform paid what, where your listeners are located, and whether they’re on free or paid tiers.

This calculator solves that. It’s built on the most current artist-reported payout data for 2026, and it lets you estimate earnings across multiple platforms simultaneously so you can compare where your music earns the most.

Per-stream rates: every major platform in 2026

These figures represent the current industry estimates and artist-reported payout ranges for each platform. Actual rates are not fixed, they fluctuate monthly based on total platform revenue, total streams, and listener geography.

How streaming royalties actually work

Streaming royalties are not a flat fee. Every platform uses a variation of the pro-rata model: total monthly platform revenue is divided by total monthly streams across the platform, producing a “per stream rate” for that month. That number changes every month.

The three factors that move your rate

1. Your listeners’ geography. Advertisers pay dramatically more to reach US, UK, and Canadian users. A stream from a premium subscriber in New York generates more revenue for the platform, and more royalty income for you, than the same stream from a free-tier listener in a low-CPM market.

2. Free vs paid tier. Premium subscribers pay monthly fees, which create a larger revenue pool. Ad-supported streams are worth significantly less because ad rates are lower and less predictable than subscription revenue.

3. Your share of total streams. Because the model is pro-rata, an artist who accounts for 1% of all streams gets 1% of all royalties. As platforms grow, your share of total streams effectively shrinks unless your own stream count grows proportionally.

How to earn more per stream without more streams

Target listeners in high-CPM regions

The same song streamed 10,000 times by US listeners earns roughly 2–3× more than 10,000 streams from lower-CPM markets. When running paid promotion on Meta or TikTok, geo-target the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Germany, the five highest-paying streaming markets globally.

Release on TIDAL (and pitch to their editorial team)

TIDAL’s editorial playlist placements are undercompeted compared to Spotify’s. With per-stream rates 3–4× higher than Spotify, landing even a small TIDAL playlist can materially change your royalty income from the same listener count.

Convert free-tier listeners to Audiomack Supporters

On Audiomack specifically, the Supporters program (direct fan subscriptions) pays ~85% revenue share versus 50% for streaming royalties. Even 30 paying supporters at $3/month generates $76.50/month — equivalent to roughly 55,000 Audiomack streams.

Claim your publishing royalties

Surveys consistently show that 20–40% of independent artists have unclaimed mechanical royalties sitting in collection society accounts. If you write your own music and haven’t registered with a PRO and a mechanical rights organization (like MLC in the US or MCPS in the UK), you’re leaving money on the table every single month.

Frequently asked questions