Apple Music

2021: Apple pays musicians one cent for every Apple Music audition

In mid-April 2021, Apple revealed the amount it pays musicians for each audition at Apple Music. The company pays one cent for one listen in the service, which is twice as much as Spotify. Apple gives 52% of the revenue from subscriptions to copyright holders.

According to The Verge, the Spotify service, compared to Apple, on average pays from a third to half a cent for listening and gives rights holders from 75 to 80% of revenue. At the same time, Spotify has more users who are more active in listening to music than Apple Music users. The total number of Spotify users exceeds 345 million, of which 155 million use Spotify Premium services. Officially, the number of Apple Music users in June 2019 was 60 million, according to recent estimates, the figure grew to 72 million people. Artists do not receive payments directly, since initially the funds go to record companies, which, with the deduction of the commission, give the funds to the performers.

Apple pays musicians 0.77 rubles for each audition on the Apple Music service

So, according to Variety, there is no exact formula for comparing the earnings of artists on a particular service. Moreover, metrics for one audition are not the main indicator for evaluating music companies, the top manager of one of the labels notes.

He claims that payments to musicians depend primarily on an increase in the total number of listeners on the streaming service, as well as on what proportion of users remain on the service after a trial free period (in the case of Spotify). According to Variety, the terms of contracts of different labels with the same service may differ, so the calculation of payments is also carried out in different ways.

In March 2021, Spotify introduced the Loud & Clear service, which provides artists who are dissatisfied with the payment system with the opportunity to independently calculate their royalties for broadcasting songs. It is expected that this initiative will increase the transparency of the licensing system.^[1]

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