Snoop Dogg shares how much he made from 1 billion Spotify streams. It's far less than you’d imagine

Music artists have many streams of revenue and one of the major sources is platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. However, artists don't earn as much as we think they do from these streams. In an episode of Business Untitled podcast, rap star Snoop Dogg shared insights into the economics of streaming which really surprised his fans. 

In the episode, the West Coast rap icon disclosed that he received less than $45,000 for reaching 1 billion streams on Spotify. While he didn't disclose if he was talking about the total earnings, it does shine light on the fact that it isn't that much. According to reports, publishing royalties are shared among songwriters, with divisions between music and lyrics contributors.

"They just sent me some s**t from Spotify, where I got a billion streams, right? My publisher hit me. I said, 'Break that down, how much money is that?' That s**t wasn't even $45,000. ... You see what I'm saying? So it's like when this s**t came out, I could tell an artist that same song that you put out traditionally that didn't make any money, give it to me. Every time you sell it if somebody else sells it you get 10 percent of it."

It is known that Spotify pays artists around $0.0035 per stream. However, this amount is not directly sent to the artist. There are parties like record labels, managers as well as the songwriters who have a share in this money. 

According to Variety, some artists like Taylor Swift brought in more than $100 million from Spotify streaming revenue alone after taking in 26.1 billion streams in 2023. Based on the same estimate, Snoop may have brought in somewhere between $3-4 million from Spotify. As per a Music Business Worldwide report, Spotify made changes to its royalty program. This move was implemented back in January 2024 and is "designed to [demonetize] a population of tracks that today, on average, earn less than five cents per month," as per an insider, via MBW. 

"Often, these micro-payments aren’t even reaching human beings; aggregators frequently require a minimum level of [paid-out streaming royalties] before they allow indie artists to withdraw the money," the source told MBW. "We’re talking about tracks [whose royalties] aren’t hitting those minimum levels, leaving their Spotify royalty payouts sitting idle in bank accounts."

As of 2024, Snoop Dogg is worth $160 million and his wealth is attributed to his various businesses including, a wine brand, a cookbook, as well as other businesses. He also charges a cool $250,000 for a feature. He also own a YouTube channel called Doggyland which is aimed at kids and was launched back in 2022. As of now, the channel has a million subscribers. Recently Snoop Dogg also appeared at Paris Olympics as a special correspondent for which he earned $500,000 a day plus expenses for his appearance, as per a tweet.