How Many Music Streams Does it Take to Earn a Dollar?

A decade ago, the music industry was headed for a protracted fade-out.

The disruptive effects of peer-to-peer file sharing had slashed music revenues in half, casting serious doubts over the future of the industry.

Ringtones provided a brief earnings bump, but it was the growing popularity of premium streaming services that proved to be the savior of record labels and artists. For the first time since the mid-90s, the music industry saw back-to-back years of growth, and revenues grew a brisk 12% in 2018 – nearly reaching $10 billion. In short, people showed they were still willing to pay for music.

Although most forecasts show streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music contributing an increasingly large share of revenue going forward, recent data from The Trichordist reveals that these services pay out wildly different rates per stream.

Note: Due to the lack of publicly available data, calculating payouts from streaming services is not an exact science. This data set is based on revenue from an indie label with a ~150 album catalogue generating over 115 million streams.

Full Stream Ahead

One would expect streaming services to have fairly similar payout rates every time a track is played, but this is not the case. In reality, the streaming rates of major players in the market – which have very similar catalogs – are all over the map. Below is a full breakdown of how many streams it takes to earn a dollar on various platforms:

*U.S. monthly minimum wage of $1,472 **Premium tier

Napster, once public enemy number one in the music business, has some of the most generous streaming rates in the industry. On the downside, the brand currently has a market share of less than 1%, so getting a high volume of plays on an album isn’t likely to happen for most artists.

On the flip side of the equation, YouTube has the highest number of plays per song, but the lowest payout per stream by far. It takes almost 1,500 plays to earn a single dollar on the Google-owned video platform.

Spotify, which is now the biggest player in the streaming market, is on the mid-to-low end of the compensation spectrum.

The Payment Pipeline

How do companies like Spotify calculate the amount paid out to license holders? Here’s a look at their payout process:

As this chart reveals, dollars earned from streaming still don’t tell the full story of how much artists receive at the end of the line. This amount is influenced by whether or not the performer has a record deal, and if other contributors have a stake in the recorded work.

The Pressure is Heating Up

When Spotify was a scrappy startup providing a much needed revenue stream to the music industry, labels were temporarily willing to accept lower streaming rates.

But now that Spotify is a public company, and tech giants like Apple and Amazon are in the picture, a growing chorus of industry players will likely dial up the pressure to increase compensation rates.

Humans have been building things since the dawn of time. As the tools and technology at our disposal have improved dramatically, so have the scale and magnitude of our creations.

Today’s infographic from Alan’s Factory Outlet visualizes some of the most impressive feats of construction and engineering in a historical timeline of the world’s tallest structures.

The Stone Age: 8000 — 2570 BCE

We’ll begin with one of humanity’s earliest stone monuments.

Experts estimate that the Tower of Jericho in modern-day Palestine, took 11,000 working days to construct—roughly 30 to 40 years—and is thought to have served as flood protection, and to mark the summer solstice. According to some archaeologists, it also inspired awe to “motivate people [into] a communal lifestyle”.

View the full timeline by clicking here.

The next significant structure was built nearly 4,000 years later. The Anu Ziggurat (White Temple) is located in Uruk, the ancient city of Sumer. Towering over the city’s defensive walls and visible from afar, it symbolized the city’s political power at the time.

Egypt’s era of pyramids was ushered in with the Step Pyramid of Djoser. A few decades later, the founding pharaoh Sneferu is credited for the vision behind the three major Egyptian pyramids—the Meidum, Bent, and Red Pyramids of Dahshur. The different designs reflect both the engineering shortfalls and advancements experienced during their construction…eventually leading to the most monumental pyramid of all.

The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest of the ancient world wonders, and the only one that is still intact today. It weighs an estimated 6 million tonnes—and rising up at 481 feet (147 meters), it was unsurpassed as the tallest structure for thousands of years.

Cathedral Creation: 1221 — 1549 CE

The timeline below skips ahead over 3,000 years after the construction of the Great Pyramid, as the reign of cathedrals begins to take over, starting with the Old St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1221—which needed over 200 years to complete.

View the full timeline by clicking here.

The Lincoln Cathedral enjoyed its title of tallest structure for over 200 years, until the St. Mary’s Church in Germany was constructed. However, all three of these cathedrals suffered serious damage for some reason or another: towers or spires collapsed, the buildings caught on fire, or were struck by lightning.

From Churches to the Chrysler: 1569 — 1930

The construction of religious monuments continued well into the late 19th century, with the Cathedral of Saint Peter of Beauvais to the Cologne cathedral. Several cathedrals were originally constructed years prior, but only gained the title of tallest structure once the Great Pyramid had significantly eroded by about 33 feet (10 meters).

View the full timeline by clicking here.

The Washington Monument, the world’s tallest obelisk, was created in memoriam of the first U.S. President. Though the majority of the Monument is marble, its apex is aluminum and bears several inscriptions on each face.

The Eiffel Tower likely needs no introduction—the Parisian cultural icon became the tallest in the world in 1889. The wrought-iron lattice structure costed close to 8 million gold Francs, or US$1.5 million to build.

Finally, the Chrysler Building’s art-deco architectural style drew criticism and rave reviews in equal measure. Born out of a skyscraper boom in New York City, it was the first to rise above 1,000 feet—toppling the Eiffel Tower’s tallest title in 1930.

Bigger, Better, Glitzier: 1931 — Present

The “race for the sky” continues with the Empire State Building, an essential contribution to the classic New York City skyline—which cements its place as one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

View the full timeline by clicking here.

Between 1954 and 1991, the tallest man-made constructions were all TV towers, mostly located across the United States, and the Warsaw Radio Mast in Poland. That’s not to say there was a gap in skyscrapers during this time—in fact, it was quite the opposite all around the world.

Saving the best for last, the Burj Khalifa was completed in five years and costed a whopping $1.5 billion. At an impressive 163 floors (2,722 feet or 830 meters), Dubai’s incredible achievement shatters all world records for tallest structures—coming in at nearly 100 times higher than the Tower of Jericho, where this visual timeline first began.