There are currently over 100 songs on Spotify with over one billion streams, but how much are these artists earning from streaming services.

Drake’s One Dance became the first song to hit one billion streams on Spotify in December 2016. This single was overtaken in September 2017 by Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You, which still holds the record for the most-streamed song on Spotify. Today, all of the top 100 songs on Spotify have surpassed one billion streams, with the top 10 ranging from 1.8 to 2.9 billion streams.

We recently covered Spotify’s pay rate per stream, detailing how this is an inaccurate way to measure how much artists are paid as many factors affect how much each stream is worth.

Hypebot recently calculated the average pay-per-stream rate as between $0.003 and $0.005. If we times this number by one billion, we end up with $3 million – $5 million. However, don’t think that all of this money ended up in the pockets of the artists you stream. Almost all of the songs over one billion streams are owned by major record labels, such as Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group. These major record labels take huge portions of the artist’s revenue from streaming services, varying from artists to artist, making it difficult to calculate.


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