Maximizing Your Music Streaming Earnings with Web Monetization - How much Kabza De Small, A.K.A and more could potentially earn if their music was Web Monetized

The Spotify Wrapped celebratory period has died now, most of us have shared on social media our Spotify statistics for our friends to see while artists have shared the milestones they have achieved on digital streaming platforms. Although Spotify reveals to us some interesting statistics, there has been an important statistic that is never public information which is the rate at which artists get paid for each time their song gets played.

Music streaming is one of the most popular ways for people to consume music in today’s digital age. This is great news for the music industry, but unfortunately, the rate at which artists get paid for each time their song gets played is not very high. This is why musicians should consider alternative ways to make money from their music, such as web monetization. Web monetization is a way for content creators to be compensated for their work by allowing users to stream micro-payments while they visit a website or stream their music.

In this article I will be comparing the estimated amount artists earn on Spotify with the amount they could potentially earn if their music was monetized using web monetization. To estimate Spotify earnings, I will be using a streaming royalty calculator tool. To avoid any complexities for web monetization earnings, the assumption is that every user accessing an artist’s catalogue is subscribed to Coil. From the creator’s page, Coil mentions that they pay $0.36 for every hour a member spends on your content.

Comparing Spotify Revenue with Web Monetization using Spotify Wrapped Statistics

Kabza De Small

AKA

K.O

Tory Lanez

MashBeatz

Touchline

Loatinover Pounds

Conclusion

The data above serves as an accurate estimation only in a world where all Spotify artist receive the same amount per stream but unfortunately it is not like that. The artists that receive the most on Spotify are artists that are located in countries where there’s tremendous competition for advertising spots so it could be that our African artists receive way less than the estimations.

Web monetization is a new technology so there is still some work that needs to be done to onboard users. According to the table above, an artist only needs a fraction of the engagement from users in order to generate revenue that is equivalent to Spotify. The only metric that is important is the amount of hours spent listening to the music so for example, Kabza De Small fans would need to listen to his music for 780K hours (12% of his 2022 total) in order for Kabza De Small to receive the same amount he gets from Spotify royalties in 2022. Another great benefit about web monetization is that artists receive micro-payments in real-time while their audience are listening to their music 😃.

In conclusion, if you are an artist that already has an audience, the best way to earn through your music is by adopting the freemium business model where consumers who cannot afford to pay for your music are served with ads and the one’s subscribed to web monetization are free to enjoy it without advertisements.

If you are an independent artists looking to try out web monetization, please check out the streaming platform for independent artists. Click on the contact me button on the landing page if you would like a tailored solution.