Spotify reveals pays more than $1bn in royalties per year

London – Spotify, music streaming service, has reportedly revealed that it pays an average of 0.007 dollars per play.

The company said that it had paid more than one billion dollars in royalties since its 2008 launch.

According to the BBC, earlier this year, Radiohead singer Thom Yorke had pulled material from the site in protest at how much it pays artists and tweeted that he was standing up for fellow musicians.

However, Spotify’s new website, Spotify Artists said that it has urged musicians to consider accumulative earnings from a successful album, rather than focusing on plays per song.

The company said that it has kept just 30 percent of the money from subscriptions to its premium service and advertising.

It said that if they can offer fans a listening experience superior to piracy, then they will be happy to pay for it, and in turn happy to pay out nearly 70 percent of all the money earned in royalties.

The report said that the 70 percent is usually paid direct to record labels, who take their cut before it reaches managers and artists.

The website has illustrated how much a niche indie album could earn per month (3,300 dollars) compared to a breakthrough indie album (76,000 dollars), a Spotify top 10 album (145,000 dollars) and what it calls a global hit album (425,000 dollars a month in royalties).

Music Week Editor Tim Ingham said that if Spotify increases its reach to tens of millions of subscribers as planned, it would increase the per-stream rate ‘dramatically’.

The report added that Spotify Artists also pointed that it pays out more than double that of a video streaming site such as YouTube.