An average hit song on the radio today will earn the songwriter $600-800,000 in performance royalties. A band with a hit song can bring in anywhere from $10 thousand to $50 thousand per performance. The actual members of the band get between 85% and 90% of that.
Record Breaking Songs
According to Guinness World Records, the longest officially released song is The Rise and Fall of Bossanova by PC III, which lasts 13 hours, 23 minutes, and 32 seconds. The longest pop song is ”Apparente Libertà” by Giancarlo Ferrari, which is 76 minutes, 44 seconds. Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” (1942) as performed by Bing Crosby is the best-selling single worldwide, with estimated sales of over 50 million copies.
Streaming and Mechanical Royalties
Apple Music pays a small fraction of a cent each time a song is streamed, and the amount is multiplied by the total number of streams to calculate the payout amount. The original mechanical royalty was established in 1909 and set at 2 cents. Today, the current rate is 9.1 cents (typically split with co-writers and publishers).
Physical Mechanical Royalties in the U.S. come out to $0.091 per reproduction of the song. Spotify pays between $0.003 and $0.0084 per stream, with an average payout of $0.004 per stream.
Selling Music and Earnings from Streams
How much does it pay to sell a song? Artists are paid between $0.001 and $0.008 per stream. You can expect to make between $1,000 and $8,000 if your song is streamed a million times. Taylor Swift earned an average of $4 million per show in 2018, making her the highest-paid artist per concert. An entire album could start at around 2000 dollars.
George Gershwin’s (USA) jazz standard “Summertime” is considered to be the most popular version of “Yesterday” by The Beatles. While churches are typically permitted to play and perform copyrighted songs during worship services, the law generally only extends to live, in-person performances.
Selling music on iTunes involves an initial setup fee of $9.99 per album or $0.99 per single, which covers the cost of making your songs available for purchase. Additionally, iTunes takes a 30% commission on each sale made through their platform.
By affiliating with a performing rights organization (PRO), such as BMI, the writer engages the PRO to issue licenses and collect performance royalties on their behalf. Songwriters rarely “sell” their songs.
Average Songwriter Earnings
How much money does a songwriter make per song? The songwriter is paid a mechanical royalty every time an album or single is sold. In the United States, the amount songwriters are owed is set by law at 9.1 cents or 1.75 cents per minute of playing time, whichever is greater. Some top songwriters can make six figures in residual income from hit songs.
Additional Revenue Streams for Songwriters
Let’s go over the most common revenue streams artists use to monetize their music:
- Earn streaming royalties through digital distribution.
- Make money playing gigs.
- Sell band merchandise online.
As a songwriter, payments for writing a song for independent/local artists or producers can range from $200 to $1000. Writing three tracks a week at $300 each could result in a yearly income of $57,000.
The frustration among songwriters is often directed at earnings from album streams. NeYo pointed out that 1 million streams of a song on Pandora only earns a songwriter $90 on average.
Using the music streaming money calculator helps determine earnings per stream. Very well-known songwriters receive per-track compensation in addition to other royalties.
How to make money as a songwriter?
- Live Performance: Most artists earn the bulk of their income through live shows.
- Sales: Go hand-in-hand with live performances.