Royalty split calculator

What this tool does (and doesn't)

This calculates your songwriter-side royalty — the money that flows to you and your co-writers because you wrote the song. It does not calculate the master-recording royalty, which is a separate stream of money that goes to whoever owns the recording (usually the label, or the artist if they're independent). Those are two completely different pots of money, and confusing them is the single biggest reason people think songwriting royalties are higher or lower than they actually are.

Every time a song is streamed, the platform pays out roughly $0.003–$0.005 in total royalties. But only a slice of that — usually somewhere between 15% and 25% — is the songwriter's share. The rest goes to the master side. When you see the headline "Spotify pays $0.003 per stream", that is the total rights-holder payout, not what the songwriter gets. What the songwriter gets is the number in this calculator.

Mechanical vs performance royalties

Songwriter royalties actually come in two flavours, and the calculator rolls them into a single per-stream number because you almost never receive them separately and the total is what matters for planning.

Mechanical royalties are paid every time a copy of your song is made — and in streaming law, every stream counts as a copy. In the US, mechanicals on interactive streams are set by the Copyright Royalty Board (currently around $0.0015–$0.002 per stream, paid to the publisher and songwriter). Your mechanical royalties usually arrive via a distributor like DistroKid, CD Baby, or TuneCore if you're unpublished, or via a publishing admin like Songtrust, Sentric, or your publisher if you're signed.

Performance royalties are paid every time your song is performed — including digitally. Streaming counts as a performance too, and platforms pay a performance fee on top of the mechanical. In the US these flow through a PRO (ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC). Outside the US, PRS in the UK, SOCAN in Canada, GEMA in Germany, and so on. Every country has its own collection society.

Added together, a modest estimate for total songwriter-side payout from one Spotify stream in the US is around $0.0004–$0.0006, depending on subscription tier, region, and whether the listener is ad-supported or premium. The calculator defaults to $0.00050 for Spotify and similar blended figures for the other platforms. You can edit every rate — if you have better data from a recent payout statement, punch it in.

Why the per-stream rates look so different

Apple Music pays more than Spotify per stream because Apple has no free tier — every listener is a paying subscriber, and paying subscribers generate a bigger pool of royalties per capita. Tidal pays even more because their HiFi tier is the most expensive in streaming, so the pool per listener is higher. YouTube Music pays more than YouTube's ad-supported tier for the same reason. And ad-supported YouTube pays the least of anyone because ad revenue per listener is tiny compared to subscription revenue.

Amazon Music sits in the middle. Smaller services like Deezer, Anghami, and Boomplay tend to cluster around the Spotify number, and some regional platforms pay meaningfully less. If you have significant streams on a platform not listed in the calculator, add it manually or use the Spotify rate as a rough proxy.

How writer splits work

When a song has multiple writers, the total songwriter-side royalty pool is divided by the agreed writer shares. If three of you wrote the song 40/30/30, the writer who owns 40% receives 40% of the songwriter pool, and so on. This is what a split sheet nails down the day you write the song — which is exactly what our split sheet generator produces.

The numbers only work if the shares total exactly 100%. The calculator refuses to calculate until they do, and flags the total in red if it's off. "Split evenly" handles the rounding for you when you've got three writers and don't want to argue about the extra 0.01%.

Publisher take explained

If you're signed to a publisher (or to a publishing administrator, which is the same idea with a smaller cut), they take a percentage of your share before the money hits your account. That percentage is what the "Pub take %" column captures.

Typical rates: a traditional publisher takes 25–50% of your royalties in exchange for advance money and active song-pitching. An administrator (Songtrust, Sentric, Kobalt's entry-level tier) typically takes 10–20% and doesn't give you an advance — they just register your songs globally and collect the money. If you're self-published, the pub take is 0% and the full writer share lands in your bank account.

Set each writer's publisher percentage independently. One writer might be signed to Warner Chappell at 25% while their co-writer is signed to Songtrust at 15% and a third is self-published. The calculator handles each writer's pub cut separately.

What the headline per-stream number obscures

People quote "Spotify pays $0.003 per stream" as if it's a fact about what songwriters earn. It isn't. That number is the total royalty pool Spotify pays out per stream. Of that:

• Roughly 55–60% goes to the master recording rights holder (the label)
• Roughly 15–25% goes to the songwriter side (you)
• Roughly 15–20% Spotify keeps as their margin

So when you see Spotify's per-stream number, mentally cut it by roughly 80% to get the songwriter share, and then split that by your writer percentage, and then subtract your publisher's cut. That's the number this calculator produces. It feels smaller than the headline number because it is smaller, and knowing the real number is the difference between budgeting accurately and being disappointed every quarter.

US vs UK/EU variations

Outside the US, the split between mechanical and performance royalties is different, and the total songwriter pool can be slightly higher because many European countries have stronger statutory minimums for streaming mechanicals. UK and EU streams tend to pay 10–20% more to the songwriter side than US streams, once you account for collection society efficiency and exchange rate. Latin American and Asian streams typically pay less, often significantly so.

The defaults in this calculator are US figures. If your audience is mostly European, bump the rates up by 10–15%. If mostly Latin America or Southeast Asia, bump them down by 20–30%. These adjustments won't be exact but they'll be closer than assuming US rates apply worldwide.

How to read your actual payout statement

When royalty statements arrive (usually quarterly from distributors and admins, semi-annually from PROs and traditional publishers), they'll be maddeningly detailed — broken out by territory, platform, subscription tier, and rights type. Use this calculator as a rough sanity check: if your statement says you earned $40 on 100,000 Spotify streams but the calculator says you should have earned $50, the difference is probably territory mix plus the admin's own cut. If the difference is more than 30%, ask questions.

Keep statements. They become important at tax time, when negotiating publishing deals, and when tracking whether a song is actually working for you commercially.

Common mistakes

Confusing master and songwriter royalties. If you're both the artist and the songwriter, you receive both — but they come from different sources on different schedules and often through different companies. Adding them together and assuming one source will pay everything is how people end up chasing money that never arrives.

Ignoring the publisher cut on planning. If you're signed to an admin at 15%, a projected $1,000 quarter is actually $850. Budget for the real number, not the gross number.

Expecting streaming to pay a living wage from modest numbers. A million streams sounds like a lot, and it is — but even at Apple Music rates across all writers and no publisher cut, a million streams pays roughly $1,100 on the songwriter side. Streaming royalties are best understood as a long tail, not a salary. They matter when songs compound across years and catalogues — not from the first single in month one.

About the rates

Per-stream rates in the calculator are approximate industry averages for 2024, US territory, combining mechanical and performance royalties on the songwriter side. They come from aggregated payout reports, industry publications like Billboard and Music Business Worldwide, and cross-referenced with distributor royalty calculators. They are not guarantees. Your actual rates will vary based on subscription tier mix, territory, currency conversion, and whether Spotify is in a pricing dispute with anyone that quarter.

Every rate in the calculator is editable. If a platform sends you a statement with exact numbers, use those instead. The tool is built to be transparent about its assumptions, not to pretend it knows your specific payout to the penny.