How many Spotify streams to make a living?

Author

Andrew Southworth
April 07, 2025

Hey friends!

Happy Monday! On Friday I published a video called “How many Spotify streams to make a living?”, where I explain how many streams and monthly listeners you need to make a living from Spotify alone.

Here’s the link to that video if you haven’t seen it yet:

The TLDR is it takes about 200k to 800k monthly listeners to make a full time living from Spotify alone.

But here’s the thing…

Almost no artists doing this full time make their living solely from Spotify.

Not only are there other DSPs like Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music etc (many of which pay better than Spotify as well). But there are also many other revenue streams in music like touring, merchandise, memberships, affiliate deals, sponsorships, publishing, tab books, etc.

Many artists supplement their artist project with other music related things like production work, session work, lessons, sample packs, partnerships with gear and software companies, consulting, courses, content creation etc.

I do know many people who make their living mostly from streaming, but I know 100X that who make their living from the entire pie. The ecosystem of revenue streams they’ve built up over time.

It’s actually very rare for an artist to be mostly held up by streaming. Streaming is where you get your fans in the first place, and get them to fall in love with you, but it’s everything else in your business that makes the real money.

If you’re one of the lucky ones pulling off a full time living from streaming alone - congrats! You have an amazing passive income stream that allows for immense freedom from some of the more laborious parts of the industry (touring and merch ain’t easy). But also if you’re in that situation, you’re probably sitting on a literal goldmine of other revenue sources that you could be tapping into… so tape into it!

More New Content

In this interview Ryan Schmidt and I talk about music law, how artists and labels can protect themselves and how music royalties ACTUALLY work in language anyone can understand.

We're 1 week into this Spotify growth campaign to promote our song, let's go over how it's doing and how i'm optimizing it!

How to Promote Your Music on Spotify with Facebook Ads (2025):

Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:

  1. My courses. Spotify Growth Machine teaches you how to use Facebook ads to promote your music on Spotify. YouTube Growth Machine teaches you how to grow a YouTube channel organically and how to use YouTube ads. Fan Growth Machine teaches you how to build a website, online store and grow your email list.

  2. My ad agency specializes in running Facebook conversion ads to promote your music on Spotify.

  3. Website / Store / Funnels. MusicFunnels is the best all-in-one platform for music artists to make a website, online store, sales funnels and build their mailing list.

  4. 1-on-1 consulting. You can book 1-hour calls with myself or my team here.

Southworth Media

Southworth Media provides digital music marketing solutions to artists, managers and record labels.

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