Streaming Payout Reality

About the Story

Streaming payouts are often reduced to a headline “per-stream rate.” In practice, artist earnings are shaped by multiple structural variables and, most importantly, by the revenue allocation model each platform applies.

This analysis compares major streaming platforms to clarify what actually determines compensation. Influencing factors include subscription tiers (free vs. premium), track length, publishing versus master royalties, streaming geography, rights agreements, and stream type.

The dominant driver, however, is the revenue pooling model:

• Artist-centric: Platforms boost payments to artists who meet defined criteria, prioritizing those considered most valuable to the ecosystem.
• User-centric: Each listener’s subscription fee is distributed only among the artists they personally streamed.
• Pro-rata: All subscription and advertising revenue is pooled and allocated proportionally based on an artist’s share of total streams.
• Hybrid: Payouts combine fixed per-stream components with distributions tied to overall platform revenue.

Using these frameworks, we estimate how different platforms would pay under comparable assumptions. To ground the model in real-world data, we analyze publicly shared 2025 streaming figures from Los Campesinos! and compare their reported earnings to our calculated estimates.

The analysis draws on data and reporting from:

• Music Business Worldwide https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-is-changing-its-royalty-model-to-crush-streaming-fraud/

• The official website of Los Campesinos! https://loscampesinos.com/heres-how-much-money-los-camp-make-from-streaming/
• The Streams & Dreams report by IAO https://www.iaomusic.org/streams-dreams/

Why Vizzu?

Streaming economics involve layered revenue flows that are difficult to communicate with static visuals. Vizzu enables the story to unfold step by step, by moving from definitions to modeled scenarios and finally to real-world outcomes. By animating how revenue moves through each payout system, the comparison becomes clearer, more transparent, and easier to evaluate.