YouTube Music royalties calculator: pay per stream in 2026

What YouTube Music pays per stream in 2026

Official audio and art tracks on YouTube Music: Premium plays are paid from subscription money and ad-supported plays from ads, so your own mix decides where in the range you land. The table shows what that range means for common totals and three typical distributor cuts.

Rate: $0.0045 to $0.0055 per stream ($4.49 to $5.49 per 1,000), sources 1 2. Distributor cuts: 0% is DistroKid's subscription model 1, 9% is CD Baby 1, 15% is RouteNote Free 1 and AWAL 1. All checked 15 October 2026. If you are signed to a label, multiply the last columns by your royalty rate.

How YouTube Music pays

YouTube Music plays of your official audio (the "art track" your distributor delivers) are paid from YouTube's subscription and ad revenue. YouTube only publishes totals, saying it paid more than $8 billion to the music industry in the 12 months to July 2025, and never a per-stream rate. The range here comes from payout data: Duetti, LANDR royalty calculator.

This is not the same money as views of other people's videos that use your song. That is Content ID, which pays a fraction as much: see the YouTube Content ID calculator.

Why it is a range, not one number

No source measures every YouTube Music payment, and each one covers different countries, years and plans. Here is what each says, word for word. The low end of our range is the lowest credible recent figure and the high end the highest.

Premium against ad-supported plays

A play by a YouTube Music Premium subscriber is paid from subscription money; a play on the free, ad-supported app is paid from ads. A distributor calculator gives $4.49 to $5.49 per 1,000 (LANDR), and Duetti's 2024 data, which blends all of YouTube, sits inside that at $4.8 per 1,000 (Duetti). Neither splits Premium from ad-supported plays, so an audience that mostly uses the free app may sit below the range.

Worked examples

• 1 million streams on YouTube Music pays about $4,490 to $5,490 to the rights holder. After a 15% distributor cut you keep $3,817 to $4,667.
• 100,000 streams pays about $449 to $549; 10,000 pays about $45 to $55.
• $1,000 takes about 182,000 to 223,000 streams with a 0% cut.
• Rent of $1,500 a month takes about 273,000 to 334,000 streams every month, before tax.
• A 50/50 split with a producer on 1 million streams: each of you gets about $2,245 to $2,745. Add collaborators in the calculator to see each person's share.

What these figures leave out

Every number here is the recording (master) side: what the platform pays the account that owns the recording, usually your distributor account. Songwriting money is separate. Mechanical and performance royalties for the composition go to the publisher, collection society or PRO, and US radio-style plays also earn SoundExchange money. None of that is in these figures, so a songwriter who owns their masters earns more than the table shows.