If you release your own music in Southern California, streaming money arrives as small numbers on a distributor statement, and every year the rules behind those numbers shift a little. This is what changed in streaming royalties for 2026, between early 2025 and September 2026, using only figures the companies and the federal rate court have published.
The short version: the pool of money grew and subscription prices rose, but the 1,000-stream minimum is still in place, the songwriter rate moved only slightly, and a federal lawsuit over how Spotify counts bundled subscriptions is still unresolved.
The pool got bigger
Spotify published its annual Loud & Clear report on March 11, 2026. It said the company paid the music industry more than $11 billion in 2025, up more than 10 percent from the year before, and that about half of that went to independent artists and independent labels.
The same report gives the clearest published sense of scale for a working artist. Spotify said the 100,000th highest-earning artist on the service generated more than $7,300 in royalties in 2025, and that an artist accounting for one in every million streams generated, on average, more than $11,000.
That second figure is the one to remember. Spotify does not pay a fixed rate per stream. It pays each rights holder a share of revenue proportional to their share of total streams, which it calls stream-share. Any per-stream rate you see online is one number divided by another, not a published price.
The pool also grew because subscriptions cost more. On January 15, 2026, Spotify announced a U.S. price increase effective in February: Premium Individual went to $12.99 from $11.99, Duo to $18.99 from $16.99, Family to $21.99 from $19.99 and Student to $6.99 from $5.99, according to Music Business Worldwide. Spotify said the increase would help it “benefit artists,” but it published no specific royalty change tied to the new prices.
The 1,000-stream rule stays
Spotify’s track monetization policy, announced in November 2023 and in force since April 2024, is unchanged as of September 2026. A track must reach at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months, plus an undisclosed minimum number of unique listeners, before it earns recording royalties. Eligibility is re-checked monthly, so a song can drop out and come back.
Spotify’s stated reasoning is that distributors only pay out once an account reaches a minimum balance, commonly between $2 and $50, so pennies earned by very low-stream tracks sit unclaimed. That money now goes to tracks that clear the bar, which Spotify says amounts to about 0.5 percent more for qualifying recordings.
For a Long Beach band with a five-song EP, the practical math is simple. A track with 999 streams in a rolling year earns nothing on the recording side. A track with 1,001 earns its full stream-share. Publishing royalties for the composition are not subject to this rule.
Deezer, which built an artist-centric model with Universal Music Group, uses a similar gate: an artist with at least 1,000 streams a month from 500 or more unique listeners has those streams counted double. On July 21, 2026, Deezer reported that fully AI-generated tracks passed half of its daily uploads in June, at roughly 90,000 a day, and said it strips fraudulent streams out of the pool before paying.
That is the other reason thresholds exist. Every platform is now filtering the pool before dividing it.
What songwriters get in 2026
If you write your own songs, you have a second income line: the mechanical royalty on the composition. In the U.S., the Copyright Royalty Board sets those rates in five-year cycles, and The MLC collects and pays them out from streaming and download services. Joining The MLC is free.
The current cycle, Phonorecords IV, runs through 2027. For interactive streaming, the headline rate is a percentage of a service’s U.S. revenue: 15.25 percent for 2025, 15.3 percent for 2026 and 15.35 percent for 2027, under the settlement accepted in December 2022.
For physical records and permanent downloads, the rate is a fixed amount per track, adjusted for inflation each year. The board’s notice published December 1, 2025, set the 2026 rate at 13.1 cents per track or 2.52 cents per minute, whichever is greater. On a 10-song vinyl pressing, that is $1.31 per copy owed to the songwriters, up from $1.20.
The next cycle, Phonorecords V, covering 2028 through 2032, formally began with a Federal Register notice on December 31, 2025. In July 2026 the board published a proposed partial settlement signed by the three major labels that would keep the physical and download rate structure through 2032 with continuing inflation adjustments. The Songwriters Guild of America and a few other participants objected before the August 10, 2026, comment deadline.
Streaming rates for 2028 and beyond are not part of that settlement. As of mid-September 2026, no streaming agreement had been published, and Music Business Worldwide reported that written statements were due October 5 if the parties could not settle.
The bundling case
The biggest open question for songwriter income is a lawsuit. The MLC sued Spotify in 2024 after Spotify reclassified Premium as a bundle of music and audiobooks in March of that year. Bundles pay a lower mechanical rate under the Phonorecords IV rules.
Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York dismissed the original case on January 29, 2025, ruling that Premium qualifies as a bundle under the regulation’s plain text. In September 2025 she allowed The MLC to file an amended complaint, which argues that Spotify calculated the bundle royalties incorrectly and overvalued its little-marketed standalone Audiobooks Access product.
Spotify said in August 2025 that a complete MLC win would mean about 256 million euros, roughly $290 million, in royalties for March 2024 through June 2025, plus possible penalties and interest.
In early September 2026, Torres denied The MLC’s request for an immediate appeal of the bundling ruling. In the same order, she struck Spotify’s defense that The MLC was enforcing the rules against Spotify but not its competitors. Discovery on the amended claims runs into November 2026. Nothing from the case has changed a songwriter’s statement yet. If The MLC eventually wins on the calculation question, the difference would arrive as back payments through The MLC.
Also not on any statement yet: the long-reported Spotify superfan tier. On May 21, 2026, Spotify and Universal announced a deal for a paid Premium add-on that would let fans create AI covers and remixes. As of September, no such tier had launched in the U.S.
Two things to do now
Check your distributor dashboard for tracks sitting just under 1,000 streams in the last 12 months. That line is the difference between zero and a payout. And if you write your own songs and have never registered them with The MLC, that is unclaimed money, and the rate goes up a little every year. For more, see The 824 Journal’s music news.
Sources
- Spotify Newsroom: As Spotify Turns 20, the Most Global and Diverse Music Industry in History Has Taken Shape (March 11, 2026)
- Spotify Loud & Clear: Takeaways and Process pages
- The Hollywood Reporter: Spotify Releases Loud and Clear 2026 Report (March 11, 2026)
- Spotify for Artists: Modernizing Our Royalty System to Drive an Additional $1 Billion toward Emerging and Professional Artists (Nov. 21, 2023)
- Spotify Support: Track monetization eligibility
- Music Business Worldwide: Spotify hikes price for Premium subscribers in the US, other markets (Jan. 15, 2026)
- Music Business Worldwide: Copyright Royalty Board officially accepts new rates that will see songwriters paid more in the US over the next 5 years (Dec. 30, 2022)
- Federal Register / Copyright Royalty Board: Cost of Living Adjustment to Royalty Rates and Terms for Making and Distributing Phonorecords (Dec. 1, 2025)
- Federal Register / Copyright Royalty Board: Determination of Rates and Terms for Making and Distributing Phonorecords (Phonorecords V) (Dec. 31, 2025)
- Federal Register / Copyright Royalty Board: Determination of Rates and Terms for Making and Distributing Phonorecords (Phonorecords V) (July 10, 2026)
- Music Business Worldwide: US Copyright Royalty Board proposes extending physical and download mechanical rates through 2032 (July 13, 2026)
- Music Business Worldwide: Spotify wins bundling lawsuit, as court dismisses legal action brought by the MLC (Jan. 29, 2025)
- Music Business Worldwide: MLC can file amended complaint in bundling lawsuit against Spotify, court says (Sept. 26, 2025)
- Music Business Worldwide: MLC vs. Spotify bundle battle intensifies as streamer opposes immediate appeal (Jan. 14, 2026)
- Digital Music News: Judge Rejects Interlocutory Appeal Push in MLC v. Spotify Lawsuit (Sept. 7, 2026)
- Hypebot: Spotify and The MLC Both Score Wins in Latest Royalty Ruling (Sept. 7, 2026)
- Deezer Newsroom: AI Music Tops 50% of Daily Uploads on Deezer (July 21, 2026)
- PR Newswire / Universal Music Group and Deezer: Universal Music Group and Deezer to Launch the First Comprehensive Artist-Centric Music Streaming Model (Sept. 6, 2023)
- Music Business Worldwide: Spotify and Universal Music Group strike landmark deal to let fans create AI covers and remixes, as a paid Premium add-on (May 21, 2026)
- The MLC: homepage
