Snoop Dogg says he's only getting $45,000 from a billion streams on Spotify.
"Let me tell you the thing that worked with me, it was simple, it was transparency," he said around the 34:28 point of the podcast, explaining why he was initially drawn to utilizing NFT technology. "That's what the music industry and the film industry doesn't have, so this was a way to show transparency. Give me a song, give me a song, I'm taking 60 percent 'cause I'm putting it out for you, you getting 40 percent that may sound like a lot but you just made $100,000."
He continued, "They just sent me some shit from Spotify, where I got a billion streams, right? My publisher hit me. I said, 'Break that down, how much money is that?' That shit wasn't even $45,000. ... You see what I'm saying? So it's like, when this shit came out, I could tell an artist that same song that you put out traditionally that didn't make no money, give it to me. Every time you sell it if somebody else sell it you get 10 percent of it."
It's unclear where Snoop got that figure from, but Spotify typically pays artists approximately $0.0035 per stream on average. The money doesn't go entirely to the artist, as there are other parties to consider such as record labels, managers, and credited songwriters as well as Spotify itself taking a cut. While that would ultimately result in less money than many fans would expect from streaming revenue, just $45,000 for a billion streams on Spotify alone seems absurd, if true.
As reported by Variety earlier this month, Taylor Swift, for instance, is set to bring in over $100 million from Spotify streaming revenue alone after taking in 26.1 billion streams this year. Based on the same estimate, Snoop should realistically be bringing in somewhere between $3-4 million from Spotify, granted there isn't a label siphoning his revenue away from him.
Elsewhere in the interview, he said his new album he's working on with Dr. Dre is almost finished. "30 years ago we did our first record," he said at the 4:20 point of the podcast. "And 30 years later we doing our second. I'm excited about it, we at the finish line."
