Just 20% of Artists get 1000 Monthly Streams on Spotify

Only 20% of artists get 1000 or more monthly streams on Spotify according analysis by Luminate. Learn why most artists fall short.

Just 20% of Artists get 1000 Monthly Streams on Spotify

by Bobby Owsinski from Music 3.0

Earlier in the year Spotify inserted a new rule into its artist royalty system – you must reach at least 1,000 streams in 12 months before you can get paid.While this new milestone seems harsh, the idea behind it is that the high bank fees charged on royalty payments of less than $50 eat up too much of the royalty money sent to an artist. When you think about it, 1,000 streams over 12 months shouldn’t be all that hard to reach if an artist has any size fan base at all.

While a thousand streams per year is a very low bar, the next one up is 1,000 per month and that’s not as easy to reach. In fact, according to music industry researcher Luminate, just 19.16% of artists on Spotify have achieved over one thousand monthly listeners. In fact, “158.6 million tracks on streaming services received 1,000 or fewer plays, comprising a massive 86.2% of the 184 million tracks monitored by Luminate.”

What’s worse, 45.6 million tracks (about a quarter of the total) were never played at all!

Considering that artists on Spotify have uploaded a combined 871.78 years of music to the platform, it’s a wonder than anyone other than a superstar gets big streaming numbers. Talk about fierce competition!

World-Wide Competition

One of the great things about streaming in general is that we can be exposed to music from all over the world, but that means even more competition for the artist. The fact is that Latin, K-Pop, African and Indian music genres are growing quickly, and it’s now been shown that you don’t have to speak a particular language to like an area’s music.

What this all means is that, although there’s an extremely low bar to entry into the music business as an artist, the bar to success pushes higher every week. Good enough is no longer good enough. When even those with significant talent can’t find an audience, it’s time to hone those music chops in order to succeed, just like it’s always been.

Bobby Owsinski is a producer/engineer, author, blogger, podcaster, and coach. He has authored 24 books on music production, music, the music business, music AI, and social media.