Spotify Overview

Spotify is a digital music, podcast, and video streaming service that gives you access to millions of songs and other content from artists all over the world. Basic functions such as playing music are totally free, but you can also choose to upgrade to Spotify Premium.

When does a release go live on Spotify?

Symphonic enables you to set a global release time if you want to. If not, releases will go live usually around 12:00AM Eastern Time but, there may be some delays. In addition, some releases may go live based on the territory you are in.

If you are in Australia and it is 12AM of the release date, you will see the release before Canada as they will show it live when it reaches 12AM on the release date of the release and so on, territory by territory.

There is no one set amount that Spotify pays out per every play. This applies as well to most if not all streaming providers.

The per play amount will be different depending on if the user that is playing the song has a free ad supported account with Spotify and/or has a paid Spotify subscription.  If it is a free account they have, the play rate may be lower than that of the paid Spotify subscription.

Further, a pay rate will be different if they are a family plan, a trial user, "Student" etc...

In addition to all of that above, a per play rate also varies by territory.

If Spotify has a $9.99 subscription for United States, then the model in the United Kingdom may be 9.99 GBP which roughly means $11.99 or so in US dollars. This means that if the consumer listening to your music is from the United Kingdom and is registered there, then the per play rate will be different from the USA and may be higher or lower.

From a free ad based perspective, the rates may also differ based on the amount of marketshare or the amount of plays your album has compared to others for the said month / quarter and further be different based on how many ad dollars have been invested in the Spotify platform.

The above is also the case for other territories and subscription types based on where the platform is being played. So if you are using a Sonos or some sort of partnership that Spotify may have with another platform and are using Spotify to consume music, the play rate may differ from that.

With all of this said, we aren't the ones that dictate the per play rate and as you can see to simply assume that there is one said per play amount would be incorrect.  

As you search aside of this Help Desk, you will see "Calculators" suggesting what an amount will be based on a certain number of streams. These "Calculators" are terribly misleading and are not updated in real time but rather, websites setup to benefit from ad based attention. These "Calculators" further don't drill down to what we've mentioned above. They don't have a pay rate for free, family, territories etc., they go by one "average" that is outdated constantly thus, you can use them as a reference but, do not trust the number you are getting.

There are other articles out there that suggest what pay rates are. These are often well written and supported by very experienced individuals in the business however, may not drill down to the above as well.

To close, we don't have an amount per play from Spotify because it will differ on various many reasons. We can only rely on the data that Spotify and other partners provide us and then pass it down to you as we receive it from a streaming count and revenue perspective. What we do to simplify this is that we take whatever we are being reported and add our percentage even if the percentage that we retain = 0%.

We hope this further clarifies Spotify's per play amount per stream and in addition, this also is very similar for most streaming providers.