BERLIN, GERMANY – JANUARY 21: The Logo of streeming services Amazon Music and Spotify is displayed on the screen of a smartphone. (Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)
Photothek via Getty Images
It defies what most in the music biz have believed until now: Spotify pays itself more than what it pays to the record labels, according to a streaming royalty calculator launched by leading law firm Manatt Phelps & Phillips.
Most assumed Spotify and the other DSPs (digital service providers) took a 30% cut off the top of music streaming revenues before remitting the rest to the record labels and music publishers, who in turn pay artists and songwriters.
But according to Manatt’s number-crunching machine, and the lawyers and analysts who stand behind it, Spotify takes a 46% cut of gross revenue and Apple Music takes a 25% cut “off the top.” That leaves labels with 43% from Spotify and 60% from Apple, with the rest going to music publishers.
Recording artists and songwriters are, in turn, typically paid by their music distributors and music publishers, unless they own their own companies.
The numbers coming out of Manatt’s calculator are surprising when it comes to just how much streamers are paying into the music eco-system.
And there’s one most-surprising revelation: Amazon Music doesn’t pay itself anything before remitting streaming revenue to the labels and publishers.
According to the Manatt calculator, Spotify is taking more for itself than was thought and Amazon Music is taking nothing for itself.
Does Amazon Provide Streaming Music For Free?
According to Trent Smith and Jordan Bromley, who developed Manatt’s calculator using data they’ve collected from the streamers, it indeed appears Amazon Music pays itself nothing “off the top.”
“This is newsworthy,” says Bromley, who leads Manatt’s highly-regarded entertainment group. Smith, who engineered the calculator, is an analyst hired by Manatt from Music Reports, Inc., considered the largest registry of music rights and related business information in the world.
“The labels negotiated rates directly with Spotify, and if there’s a 43% split for labels, like what we’re seeing, well, that’s a big dip from 55%,” which is what most have assumed the labels were receiving from Spotify.
“We’re using comprehensive rate sheets that are provided by the DSPs,” says Bromley. “So anyone with a publisher account has access to this data, but we found a way to crack it open and gain insights from the data that others maybe weren’t looking at fully.”
But is Amazon Music simply not paying itself any money from use of music on its platform by an estimated 100 million music subscribers worldwide? Especially when Spotify takes 47% and Apple Music takes 25% of gross streaming revenue “off the top” before sharing any revenue with the content owners?
From reports Smith is seeing, “Amazon reports zero revenue,” he says. But it gets complicated, because “They have a mixed service bundle” that includes music along with other things in an Amazon Prime account. “Their royalty calculation is based on the number of subscribers to the service. I believe it’s $0.25 per subscriber per month,” Smith says. But that’s not reported as streaming revenue at least for Manatt’s calculations, he says.
But twenty-five cents per subscriber per month adds up. Other sources hint at what Amazon’s gross streaming revenue may equal. In 2025, the total “wholesale” revenue paid by the DSPs to music companies was $22 billion, according to the respected IFPI Global Music Report 2026. The IFPI report does not specify the gross amount collected by the streamers from subscription fees and ad revenues pegged to music, but reports Polaris Market Research, it reaches $52 billion. If these numbers correspond, then streamers pay music companies about 42 percent of their gross global income from music streaming.
Music streaming income is small potatoes for Amazon, the world’s second biggest company after JP Morgan Chase according to a just-released Forbes report, showing that Bezos’ behemoth registered $742.8 billion in sales in 2025 and a market value of $2.8 trillion.
Unlike Spotify, which makes its living largely off of music streaming revenue, Amazon Music and Apple Music can view their music streaming businesses as mainly marketing tools.
And Spotify is clearly winning the battle for users against its much bigger rivals that don’t spotlight their music biz. Of the almost one 1 billion subscribers to music streaming services, Spotify holds a commanding lead with a 31.4% market share, according to Midia Research.
If Manatt’s streaming calculator results are accurate, music companies and creators should note how much more they’re paid by Amazon Music than Spotify, Apple, and others.
Manatt’s Bromley and Smith joined the author on his podcast Shmoozic Biz podcast to run the numbers and draw conclusions from their music streaming royalty calculator.