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What Are the Per-Stream Rates by Country?
| Country | Avg Per-Stream Rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | $0.0112 | Highest major market |
| Spain | $0.0071 | Strong European rate |
| Germany | $0.0071 | Consistent with EU average |
| Australia | $0.0068 | Above global average |
| United States | $0.0065 | Largest market, benchmark rate |
| France | $0.0065 | Matches US |
| Japan | $0.0057 | Strong but below Western rates |
| Brazil | $0.0054 | Growing market |
| Canada | $0.0052 | Below US rate |
| Mexico | $0.0029 | Lower regional rate |
| China | $0.0027 | Lower tier pricing market |
| Russia | $0.0018 | Lowest major market |
Rates calculated from Dynamoi's first-party streaming data. See our streaming royalty data dashboard for the full breakdown by platform and country.
Why Rates Vary by Country
Apple Music's per-stream payout depends on:
Subscription price in local currency. Apple charges different prices in different markets. A $10.99/month subscription in the US generates more per-stream revenue than a lower-priced subscription in an emerging market.
Pro-rata pool allocation. Apple uses a pro-rata royalty model. The total subscription revenue in each country is pooled and distributed based on stream share. Countries with more subscribers and higher prices have larger pools.
Currency conversion timing. Payouts are converted to your distributor's settlement currency. Exchange rate fluctuations can affect the final USD-equivalent amount.
What This Means for Your Strategy
If you are choosing between promoting on Apple Music vs Spotify, the per-stream economics strongly favor Apple. Based on Dynamoi's first-party distribution data, here is the per-1,000-stream comparison:
| Platform | Revenue per 1K streams |
|---|---|
| Amazon Music Unlimited | $9.02 |
| TIDAL | $6.20 |
| Apple Music | $5.43 |
| YouTube Music | $5.28 |
| Spotify | $3.02 |
Apple Music pays 80% more per stream than Spotify on a blended basis. The gap is even wider when comparing against Spotify's free tier, where per-stream rates drop significantly.
Apple Music has no free tier, so every stream comes from a paying subscriber. This structural difference is why the average payout is consistently higher.
Geographic targeting matters. If you can reach UK or Western European listeners on Apple Music, your per-stream revenue will be significantly higher than targeting emerging markets. See the full royalty data dashboard for country-level breakdowns across all platforms.
What Are the Important Caveats?
These are gross payouts to the rights holder account. Your actual take depends on your label/distributor split. If your distributor takes 15% and your label takes 20%, your net is 68% of the gross.
Spatial Audio bonus. Apple pays up to 10% higher royalties for tracks available in Spatial Audio, regardless of whether the listener streams the Spatial version. This can push US rates above $0.007.
Rates are not static. Per-stream rates fluctuate based on total platform streams (denominator effect) and subscriber counts. More streams in a month with flat revenue = lower per-stream rate.