Track eligibility for monetisation on Spotify
In April 2024, Spotify changed its payout terms and set firm rules for when artists will earn money from streams of their music and when they won’t.
Monetisation conditions
For a track to be monetised on Spotify, it must reach a threshold of at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months.
There is also a minimum required number of unique listeners for a track to be monetised. However, Spotify does not disclose this number publicly.
How eligibility is determined
Every month, Spotify assesses which tracks are eligible for royalty payouts (track monetisation eligibility). It includes in this calculation only those tracks that have passed the threshold of 1,000 streams (worldwide) over the last 12 months.
Royalties are paid only from the month in which the track first meets the conditions.
Picture it like this:
- Your new track gets 750 streams in its first month.
- In the second month, another 500 streams are added (1,250 in total).
- You only get royalties for those 500 streams from the second month.
- Unfortunately, you get nothing for the first 750 streams.
If your track passes 1,000 streams in its very first month, you get paid for the streams from the start. Otherwise, you have to wait until the total reaches a thousand – only then does money start coming in for new streams, but nothing is paid to you retroactively for the earlier ones.
Spotify checks stream counts every month. If a track’s stream count drops below 1,000 streams during the year, it stops being monetised. As soon as it gets back above the threshold, payouts resume (but nothing is paid retroactively).
These rules apply only to royalties for recordings, not to royalties for authors’ rights.
Practical impact on artists
Tracks with an annual stream count of 1 to 1,000 account for only 0.5% of total streams and of the royalties paid out by Spotify. Taken together, however, these amounts reportedly add up to tens of millions of dollars a year.
Under these rules, every track distributed to Spotify that meets the conditions (i.e. has more than 1,000 streams in the last 12 months and also meets the minimum number of unique listeners) receives 0.5% more in royalties.
So the impact is fairly minimal overall, but for countless small artists with few streams it means that they will never receive any royalties from Spotify at all.
Spotify’s motivation
Why did Spotify introduce this change? With it, Spotify is trying to clean the platform of “clutter” and to support artists who take their work seriously. According to Spotify, the new rules have several goals:
- Supporting real artists: Those who actively build their fan base and keep gaining listeners get a little more money (specifically 0.5% more).
- Fighting fraud: A system set up like this makes life harder for fraudsters who upload thousands of low-quality tracks just to earn a few pennies from each (not only by means of artificial streams, for example).
- A more efficient distribution of money: Instead of royalties being scattered among millions of inactive tracks with minimal streams and minimal royalties, they go to those who have an active audience.
According to Spotify, it doesn’t earn a single penny more from this change, and the total volume of royalties paid out stays the same. Only the way it is distributed among artists changes.
How to find out whether a track is eligible for monetisation
In Spotify for Artists, go to the “Music” section and select the “12 months” filter. Bear in mind, though, that even if a track reaches 1,000 streams, it may not meet the unique listener threshold (which Spotify doesn’t disclose) – so this method only identifies with 100% certainty the tracks that will definitely not be monetised, but the reverse is not necessarily certain.
(Also bear in mind that royalties from Spotify arrive with the usual delay – details in the article The standard time lag in royalty statements.)
But you don’t have to work it out by hand: The Spotify analytics in Analytics sort your whole catalogue automatically – more in the article Check which of your recordings Spotify does not pay you for. You can also keep track of streams of individual tracks in the daily statistics.
Dos and don’ts
Always aim for an “organic” audience and streams – that is, for listeners to play your music naturally.
Under no circumstances try to artificially increase your number of streams or listeners. Never buy “followers” or streams from any online tools that offer such services. Paradoxically, such practices can lead to fines from Spotify or to your content being blocked entirely and your artist account being deleted. What’s more, you bear the fee Spotify charges for artificial streams in full – more in the article Penalties for artificial streaming.
A model example
This model example of a track’s month-by-month development shows the number of new streams in each month and the cumulative total over the last 12 months + whether the track will be monetised (the unique listener condition is not taken into account in this example).
More information directly from Spotify here:
https://support.spotify.com/uk/artists/article/track-monetization-eligibility/