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Illustrative planning tools only. Rates, dates and amounts are values you set yourself — they are not payout quotes, guarantees or delivery commitments.
How to read a per-stream estimate
Streaming income is calculated after the fact, not from a published price per play. This page explains what drives the number, how to work out your own realistic rate, and how to plan in ranges rather than single figures.
There is no published price per play
Most streaming services do not pay a fixed amount for each play. They collect subscription and advertising revenue for a territory over a period, take their share, and distribute what remains among rights holders according to how streams were distributed. Your income therefore depends on what everyone else did that month as well as what you did. Two tracks with identical stream counts in the same month can earn different amounts, and the same track can earn different amounts in consecutive months without anything about the track changing. Any single rate you see quoted is an average pulled out of that process.
What actually moves the number
Four things move it most. Country: a play in a market with high subscription prices contributes more to the pool than one in a market with low prices. Subscription tier: paid listening generally contributes more than ad-supported listening. Platform: each service has its own revenue, its own user base and its own accounting. And the shape of the pool itself: if total listening on a service grows faster than its revenue, the amount attached to each play falls, even for artists whose own numbers are rising. This is why a rate borrowed from someone else's audience rarely transfers to yours.
Derive your own rate from your own reports
The only rate worth planning with is one you calculated from your own history. Take a period of at least three months, ideally longer. For each platform separately, divide the revenue reported to you by the streams reported for the same period. That gives you a personal blended rate for that platform, shaped by your actual audience and their actual territories. Do this per platform rather than across everything at once, because mixing them hides the differences. Recalculate whenever your listener base shifts markets or when a release changes the balance of where your plays come from.
Plan in three scenarios, not one number
A single projection will be wrong. Build three instead. Your low case uses a rate below your worst recent month, and answers whether the plan still works if things soften. Your reference case uses your own blended rate from recent history, and is the number you actually plan around. Your high case uses your strongest recent month, and tells you what upside looks like without letting you count on it. Make decisions on the reference case, check the downside against the low case, and treat the high case as information rather than a forecast.
Gross is not net
The figure a calculator produces is gross royalty on the recording, before several things come out of it. Collaborator splits reduce your share to your own percentage. Publishing income for the songwriters is a separate stream, accounted separately, and is not included in a recording estimate. Withholding tax may apply depending on your circumstances. Payment providers and currency conversion take their own cut when money moves. Work through those deductions explicitly before you commit to a budget, because the gap between the headline figure and what lands in your account is usually significant.
What 0% commission means here
Distribution and the platform tools are free to you. Mazufa takes no revenue share at all — the commission is 0 percent. In practical terms, if a calculator shows a gross recording royalty, none of it is taken by us before the other deductions above. There is no upload fee, no annual charge and no per-release charge attached to that arrangement. You also keep ownership of your masters. Apply the other deductions at the same point in your model every time, so your scenarios stay comparable.
Questions and answers
Why can't you just tell me what one stream pays?
Because no single figure is true across countries, tiers and platforms. Services distribute a revenue pool rather than paying a listed price per play, so the effective rate moves with total listening, territory mix and subscription pricing. Any headline number is an average of very different underlying cases. A rate you calculate from your own reports describes your audience; a borrowed one describes somebody else's.
How do I work out my own per-stream rate?
Take at least three months of your own reporting, and for each platform separately divide the revenue reported by the streams reported over that same period. That gives you a blended rate for that platform that reflects your real listener base. Keep platforms apart rather than averaging everything together, and recalculate when your audience shifts territories or a new release changes where plays come from.
Why did my rate drop even though my streams went up?
Rates are relative, not fixed. If total listening on a service grows faster than that service's revenue for the period, the amount attached to each play falls for everyone, including artists whose own numbers are climbing. A shift in your audience towards lower-priced markets or towards ad-supported listening has the same effect. Both are normal and neither means something has gone wrong with your release.
Is the number the calculator shows what I will be paid?
No. It is an illustrative gross figure based entirely on the inputs you type in. Collaborator splits, the separate publishing stream, any withholding tax, and payment or currency costs all sit between that figure and your bank account. Treat the output as a planning aid for comparing scenarios, never as a quote, a projection of earnings or any kind of commitment.
Does Mazufa take a share of this estimate?
Distribution and the platform tools are free to you, and we take 0% commission — no share is deducted from your royalties. Apply the gross recording royalty in your model as your starting point, then continue with splits, publishing, tax and payment costs. Keep that step the same in every scenario so your low, reference and high cases remain directly comparable.
Do all the platforms pay differently?
Yes, and often substantially. Services such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and Anghami each have their own revenue, user mix and accounting, and availability on any of them is subject to current eligibility and that platform's own rules. Because of this, one blended rate across all your income can be misleading. Calculate and plan per platform, then combine the results at the end.