It being Streaming Stat Season, I thought now would be a good time to offer a detailed breakdown of how much money we make from our music being streamed.

In doing so, I don’t intend to draw any conclusions or make any judgements, but rather just to present the data for you to consider however you wish. 

For the purpose of this I’ll be looking at streaming numbers and income for our 2024 album All Hell. I’ve chosen this album because, for this time period, it’s the one album to which we own the full rights worldwide, with all income being accounted and paid direct to us. Our other 6 albums are administered by third party record labels in some territories and we receive payments from them quarterly/twice a year, once distribution and record label fees have been deducted.

Some notes…

• Our digital distributor does not take a percentage for distribution, rather we pay an annual subscription to them.
• This is not representative of income across all of our albums. As you will see, this album’s streams are greater due to it being a new release, with nearly half the album’s annual streams coming in the first 3 months.
• There are many reasons, unrelated to artist reimbursement, why Spotify is the dirt worst of the streaming platforms. I trust by now you are aware of these.
• I want to make it very clear that I am not criticising anyone for using streaming platforms. Everyone streams, living is hell and we all love music.

All Hell was released in July 2024. Here follows a month by month list of the number of track streams from the album in its first year of release, alongside the total streaming income generated.

The above figures equate to an average of 0.34p paid to us by streaming platforms for each song listen. This means we make £1.00 for every 294 streams of a song (or to look at it another way, a quid for every 20 full listens to the album).

During this period of time we received digital streaming income from 21 different sources. These vary from traditional streaming platforms to places like Meta (£23.95), Snapchat (£1.18) and TikTok (£0.26).

The 9,300,864 streams and £31,940.29 income were split across platforms as follows.

As you can see, the vast majority of people who streamed All Hell did so using Spotify. Unfortunately, of the major streaming platforms, Spotify pays significantly less per stream than anywhere else.

If everyone who streamed All Hell on Spotify had done so using Tidal instead, we would have received an extra £31,847.38, which would double the amount we made from streaming of the album in this time period. Or if everyone used Apple Music it would have been £12,331 more.

There is an additional relevant context when it comes to considering how much money a band will receive from streaming…

NOTES ON RECORD LABELS/MANAGEMENT

We are fortunate as a band that we are self-managed and run our own record label, so the £31,940.29 that was generated through streaming flows straight to Los Campesinos! Ltd. However we are in a minority, and most bands will only see money if there is any left over after record labels and management have taken their cuts.

There are different types of record deal, but here’s an example of how it might look on a traditional royalty-rate deal.

Royalty-rate deal (preferred by major labels and large independents) – Generally in this scenario a band will sign a deal with an “advance” plus additional funding for things like tour support and recording costs. These total sums will be recouped (paid back) via income from record sales (and in some cases touring/merch income etc). A typical royalty rate paid to a band would be between 15-20%.

Money is only recouped from the artist’s percentage so, for example: 

A band has a £10,000 advance from a label. They earn £1,000 in streaming income. £200 (20%) of that streaming income goes towards recouping the advance, so the band now owes £9,800 to the record label. The remaining 80% of the streaming income (£800) goes to the record label.

So, if we had released All Hell on a label in the same way that we did with our previous six albums, even if we did not have an advance to recoup, at a high-end royalty rate of 20% only £6,388 of the £31,940.29 streaming income would have been ours (in reality it would be less than that, as the record label would likely work with one of the big digital distributors who would take a distribution fee (generally around 15-20%) before paying out to the record label).

Managers typically take 20% of all of a band’s income (not just streaming revenue, but merchandise, live income etc etc). If we had a manager they would have taken 20% of the £6,388 paid out by the record label, seeing that sum reduce to £5,110.

All Hell is available to buy now at all good independent record shops, via our online store and from Bandcamp.