How does artist, like Madonna, get paid by Apple Music or Spotify when they play her music? Does she get paid every time we listen to one of her songs?
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The streaming services get permission to stream songs online by paying the songwriters & publishers through a middleman called a Performing Rights Organization (PRO). They also pay the record companies directly for permission to use the sound recordings.
The licensing fees charged by the PROs and record companies are typically based on how big the streaming service is, and for these bigger services, it’s a promise to pay a flat rate per song play, or per certain number of plays. The fees are negotiated and collected periodically (e.g. annually). The PROs and labels take their cut, and then distribute some portion of the rest as royalties to the publishers, songwriters, and performers.
How much these artists ultimately get is affected greatly by the contracts the artists have with these publishing & record companies. Record companies get most of the streaming licensing fees but have huge expenses and often pay very little in royalties to the performers. Publishers get less in fees but typically pay out most everything they get to the songwriters.
So yes, *essentially* you can say the artist gets paid a certain amount of money per stream. It’s not immediate, and the money comes from the streaming company’s coffers. And figuring out exactly how much it is gets very complicated.
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