Streaming royalties are the money services such as Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube pay for the music they stream. There is no fixed price per play. In the common pro-rata or streamshare model, revenue from subscriptions and advertising is pooled, and each rights holder receives roughly its share of total streams: a catalogue with 1% of streams earns about 1% of the royalty pool.
The money follows two paths. Recording royalties go to the owner of the master, usually a label or a distributor acting for an independent artist, who then pays artists under their contracts. Publishing royalties for the composition go to songwriters and publishers, largely through collective management organisations. Artists therefore rarely receive money directly from the platform.
The rules change over time. Since April 2024, Spotify pays recording royalties only on tracks with at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months and a minimum number of unique listeners, a threshold that matters for large catalogues of short lo-fi pieces. For contract-specific questions, an accountant or music lawyer can help.