Apple Music recently sent out a release claiming it pays, on average, a penny per stream on its service, but is the news really as it seems?

WordPlay T. Jay is breaking down the claim and how it plays out for artists, even looking at his own revenues through Apple.

First off, there are some qualifiers the company put on the figure, like the penny per stream payment is only on paid accounts and from specific countries.

Apple said it pays the same 52 percent headline rate to labels.

“While other services pay some independent labels a substantially lower rate than they pay major labels, we pay the same headline rate to all labels,” the company said. “This means artists can distribute music however they like, knowing Apple Music will pay the same rate. Sign with a label or stay independent; we believe in the value of all music.”

T. Jay said this means Apple takes the 52 percent of their net revenue, which is money made after sales and discounts, and splits that amongst rights owners based on the number of plays they receive.

An example of this would be if Apple makes $1,000 in a month, $520 gets paid to labels, and if a label like Universal Music gets 35 percent of the plays, that equates to $182.

“While royalties from streaming services are calculated on a stream share basis, a play still has value,” Apple said. “This value varies by paid subscription plan and country but averages $0.01 for Apple Music individual paid plans in 2020. This includes label and publisher royalties.”

T. Jay said looking at his numbers specifically, a different picture is painted. Globally, he averages about $0.005 per stream, which is more than he receives from Spotify, although not too much more. Boy zooming out a decimal point, that is rounded up to $0.01 per stream, and T. Jay makes as much as $0.02 per stream in some countries, like Great Britain.

T. Jay said Apple claims any changes to their system would result in lesser payments to smaller streamers.

“Our analysis has shown [alternative royalty models] would result in a limited redistribution of royalties with a varied impact to artists,” Apple said. “Per play rates would cease to be the same for every play of a song. But more importantly, the changes would not increase what all creators earn from streaming. Instead, these changes would shift royalties towards a small number of labels while providing less transparency to creators everywhere.”

“I don’t think Apple is out to lie to us, and they have done their research, but I do think they are playing the PR game against Spotify,” T. Jay said.

To help bolster streaming revenues, T. Jay suggests enrolling in the course offered by Ari’s Take Academy, which teaches artists how to make the most possible in streaming revenue and best use of social media.

The poster child for the course is the artist Lucidious, who went from 150 monthly listeners on Spotify to 570,000; 1,500 Facebook followers to 267,000; 1,200 Instagram followers to 162,000; and less than $100 a month in earnings from his music to $15,000-$20,000 per month.

“I have taken this course and it does take years to grow like this, but I am continuing to grow,” T. Jay said.

More on the course can be found at https://aristakeacademy.teachable.com/?affcode=267075_nmye6qky.

For more about Apple’s penny-per-stream claim, check out the video below!