Let's take a quick look at what streaming services are actually paying artists.

Here you see what all of these different music streaming platforms will pay an artist for one thousand streams on a song.

Seemingly, Amazon is at the top with $8.80. Tidal it's $6.80. Apple it's $6.20. Youtube and Deezer are at $4.80, while Pandora sits down at $3.20. Spotify is pretty much at the bottom with $3. For good measure, TikTok is there at $0.50.

I mean, TikTok is not primarily a music streaming platform, but obviously people get access to some music through it. And apparently, for a thousand streams on a song, an artist may be paid 50 cents.

This list is why people give Spotify such a hard time when it comes to artist payouts. Not just because the payouts are terrible and low, but Spotify is the most popular of all of these platforms.

The fact that their payout is one of the lowest in the industry sets a very low standard. If other platforms want to beat it or look superior in comparison to Spotify, they only need to hop over a very low bar.

If you're looking to switch to another music platform, and you're doing it merely based on what the artist payouts are, there's a list to work from.