With average payments hovering around $.00575 per play, its easily arguable that Spotify, Apple Music and others music streamers are not returning sufficient revenue to creators. But in aggregate, music streaming has quickly become a major source of revenue for both independent and major labels.
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Recent earnings reports show that major music groups are collectively earning $10 million every day from audio and video streaming.
This week Sony Music reported a 39% year-on-year rise in digital streaming revenue to $25 million a week or $3.3 million per day. Universal reports earning just over $4 million per day and Warner Music logs in at about $2 million a day in revenue from audio and video streaming. That totals just shy of $10 million a day being paid by Spotify, Apple, Google, Deezer and others to the 3 dominate music groups.
Assuming that independent music companies* are logging similar revenue, and several stats that we’ve seen show that indies are experiencing in faster growth in streaming revenue, they are earning more than $5 million per day from streaming revenue.
Collectively, the music industry is now earning more that $15 million every 24 hours or almost half a billion $’s per month from music and music video streaming.
* Independent record labels represent 37.6% global recorded music market share according to a recent WIN study