How many Spotify streams to make a living?
Making a full-time living from Spotify alone requires about 200k to 800k monthly listeners, but most artists rely on multiple income streams beyond streaming to sustain their careers.
By Andrew Southworth
Hey friends!
Happy Monday! On Friday I published a video called “How many Spotify streams to make a living?”, where I explain how many streams and monthly listeners you need to make a living from Spotify alone.
Here’s the link to that video if you haven’t seen it yet:
The TLDR is it takes about 200k to 800k monthly listeners to make a full time living from Spotify alone.
But here’s the thing…
Almost no artists doing this full time make their living solely from Spotify.
Not only are there other DSPs like Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music etc (many of which pay better than Spotify as well). But there are also many other revenue streams in music like touring, merchandise, memberships, affiliate deals, sponsorships, publishing, tab books, etc.
Many artists supplement their artist project with other music related things like production work, session work, lessons, sample packs, partnerships with gear and software companies, consulting, courses, content creation etc.
I do know many people who make their living mostly from streaming, but I know 100X that who make their living from the entire pie. The ecosystem of revenue streams they’ve built up over time.
It’s actually very rare for an artist to be mostly held up by streaming. Streaming is where you get your fans in the first place, and get them to fall in love with you, but it’s everything else in your business that makes the real money.
If you’re one of the lucky ones pulling off a full time living from streaming alone - congrats! You have an amazing passive income stream that allows for immense freedom from some of the more laborious parts of the industry (touring and merch ain’t easy). But also if you’re in that situation, you’re probably sitting on a literal goldmine of other revenue sources that you could be tapping into… so tape into it!
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