As of April 2024, major music streaming platforms like Spotify employ a pro-rata payment model, sharing 70% of total revenue with artists based on their monthly stream counts. However, the value of each stream varies due to factors like subscription costs and advertising rates, making the term “pay per stream” somewhat misleading. Estimates suggest streams on Spotify are worth approximately $0.003 to $0.005 each.

Using ChartMasters data on the top ten artists by total Spotify streams, we can estimate their earnings by multiplying their lead streams (excluding featured streams) by an average of $0.004 per stream.

For example, Bad Bunny, who comes in third behind Taylor Swift and Drake, has made a total of $283,409,702 with 70,852,425,386 lead streams. Of course, these numbers are before labels, managers, etc, take their cut. ALSO, don’t forget, Spotify is just one source of revenue. The highest earning artists in the world have multiple sources of income from other stores, licensing deals, business ventures, live shows, merch sales, etc.