MusicWide

Releasing Your Music

Streaming Royalty Calculator

Plug in your numbers and get an honest estimate of what your streams are actually worth, based on the same 2026 rate ranges we walk through in the full streaming royalties breakdown. There's no per-stream rate that's exactly right for everyone; this gives you the real range instead of a myth.

Estimated monthly payout $40.00
Per person, per month $40.00
Projected over a year $480.00

That's about 2 pizzas a month, or the same money as 3 Bandcamp sales at $15, or 2 shirts sold at $25.

These are ranges, not guarantees. Actual per-stream payouts move with subscription prices, ad revenue, your listeners' countries, and how the platform's royalty pool is divided that month. Use this to sanity-check a distributor statement, not to budget rent. For the full explanation of why there's no fixed rate, read the math behind the numbers, and for what actually pays better per hour of effort, see the 2026 promotion playbook.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a streaming royalty calculator actually estimate?

It estimates what your monthly streams are worth using 2026 blended industry rate ranges, from about $0.001 per stream on ad-supported tiers up to about $0.008 on Apple Music, the same ranges walked through in the full streaming royalties math. Plug in your own stream count, platform mix, distributor cut, and band size to get a real number instead of a guess.

How much do 10,000 streams pay?

At the blended average rate of roughly $0.004 per stream, 10,000 streams works out to about $40 before any distributor cut, or about $480 a year at that pace. Split across a four-person band, that's about $10 a month each. Apple Music's higher rate would put the same 10,000 streams closer to $80; ad-supported streams would land closer to $10.

Is there one fixed streaming royalty rate?

No. Platforms pay into a shared revenue pool each month and divide it by total streams, so the effective per-stream rate moves with subscription pricing, ad revenue, and how many other streams happened that month. The rates in this calculator are honest 2026 ballparks, not a guaranteed number, which is why the results here are ranges to sanity-check a distributor statement, not a paycheck to budget against.

Which streaming platforms pay artists the most per stream?

Apple Music tends to pay the highest blended rate of the major platforms, around $0.008 per stream, because it's subscription-only with no ad-supported tier dragging the average down. Spotify's subscriber-weighted rate runs closer to $0.0035, and pure ad-supported or free-tier listening pays the least, often near $0.001 per stream.

Does this calculator account for a distributor's cut?

Yes. The distributor's cut field subtracts your distributor or label's percentage before splitting the remainder across band members, so the numbers you see are closer to what actually lands in an artist's account, not the gross number a platform reports.