Streaming Payout Reality

About the Story

Streaming payouts are often summarized as a single “per-stream rate.” In reality, artist earnings depend on multiple structural factors and the revenue model each platform uses.

This analysis compares major streaming platforms and explains what actually determines how much artists get paid. Key variables include subscription plans (free vs. premium), track length, publishing versus master royalties, streaming location, rights agreements, and the type of stream.

The most important factor, however, is the revenue pooling model:

• Artist-centric: Platforms boost payments to artists who meet certain criteria, rewarding those considered most valuable to the ecosystem.
• User-centric: A listener’s subscription fee is divided only among the artists they personally streamed.
• Pro-rata: All subscription and ad revenue is pooled and distributed based on each artist’s share of total streams.
• Hybrid: Part of the payout follows fixed per-stream rates, while another part depends on total platform revenue.

Using these frameworks, we estimate platform payouts under comparable conditions. To anchor the model in reality, we also examine publicly shared 2025 streaming figures from Los Campesinos! and compare their real-world earnings to the calculated estimates.

Why Vizzu?

Payout systems are multi-layered and difficult to explain with static charts.

Vizzu allows the story to unfold step by step by moving from structural definitions to modeled estimates and then to real-world data.

By animating how revenue flows through different models, the comparison becomes transparent and easier to reason through.