Our whole lofi catalog, 56 albums and 671 tracks, has earned $191.35 in royalties so far. That's every store, every country and every month from our first release up to the reports DistroKid had delivered by late September 2026. Almost two thirds of it came from a single song, and only that song has ever been paid a cent by Spotify.
We're publishing the full breakdown because most "how much does Spotify pay" articles quote averages. These are real numbers from a small, AI-assisted lofi label, with nothing rounded up.
The total, store by store
| Store | Plays or sales | Earned | Per 1,000 plays |
|---|---|---|---|
| TikTok | 52,544 uses | $51.98 | $0.99 |
| Apple Music | 6,419 streams | $38.13 | $5.94 |
| iTunes album downloads | 5 albums | $35.00 | $7 per album |
| Facebook and Instagram | 1,050,903 uses | $29.87 | $0.03 |
| Spotify | 5,334 paid streams | $18.07 | $3.39 |
| iTunes song downloads | 19 songs | $12.14 | about $0.64 per song |
| YouTube (Premium and ads) | 1,271 plays | $3.72 | $2.93 |
| Tidal | 83 streams | $0.84 | $10.15 |
| Amazon | about 50 plays and one sale | $0.80 | n/a |
| Everything else | Pandora, Deezer, Tencent and others | $0.79 | n/a |
| Total | $191.35 |
Three things stand out.
Short-video platforms paid the most, and the least. TikTok was our biggest earner in dollars, and Instagram and Facebook together counted over a million uses of our music. But a million uses on Meta paid $29.87, about three cents per thousand. Short video spreads a song further than anything else we've seen, and pays almost nothing for it.
Apple Music paid nearly twice Spotify's rate. $5.94 per thousand streams against Spotify's $3.39. Apple listeners were a small audience for us, but a much better-paid one.
Five people bought a whole album on iTunes. At $7 each, those five purchases earned more than 5,000 Spotify streams did. All five were in the United States, and four of them were World Cadences, the album Mellow Mosaic is on.
Why only one song earned on Spotify
Spotify for Artists shows 13,758 streams across our catalog. The royalty report shows 5,334 paid streams, every one of them for Mellow Mosaic.
The gap has two causes. Reports lag by a couple of months, so the most recent streams aren't paid yet. The bigger reason is a rule Spotify introduced in April 2024: a track has to reach 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months before it earns anything at all. Spotify said tens of millions of tracks sit below that line, averaging about three cents a month each.
Mellow Mosaic cleared 1,000 streams in March 2026 and has been paid every month since. None of our other 670 tracks has cleared it. Our second most-streamed song, Cello Whispers, had 436 streams in total. Under the old system that would have been worth about a dollar and a half; under the current one it's worth nothing.
Mellow Mosaic, lofi by Neural Rhythms
When the money came
For the first nine months after our first album in May 2025, the catalog earned less than $4 in total. Then Mellow Mosaic started turning up under Instagram Reels, and the monthly figures changed:
- February 2026: $6.76
- March 2026: $49.39
- April 2026: $51.12
- May 2026: $31.62
- June 2026: $31.08
- July 2026: $17.21 (not all stores had reported yet)
Mellow Mosaic alone earned $125.53, 66% of everything. The story of how it spread is in our post about the song from the Reels.
Where the money came from
The United States paid $139.25, 73% of the total. The next countries were far behind: the UK $3.58, Canada $2.85, Mexico $2.22, Argentina $2.04, Germany $1.97 and Australia $1.91. The same streams are worth very different amounts depending on where the listener is, so a small catalog's income follows US listeners more than anything else.
What this means if you're releasing lofi
- Spotify is a discovery tool first, and a payer only after 1,000 streams a track. A catalog of many tracks with a few hundred plays each earns nothing there.
- One track that travels beats many that don't. Our income is the story of one song, not of 671.
- Short video builds reach, not income. Treat Reels and TikTok as the way people find the music, not as a paycheck.
- Richer markets pay more per play. If you can reach US, UK or German listeners, each play is worth far more.
What we do about it
We stopped expecting streaming royalties to pay for the work. Instead, the whole catalog is free for creators to use in their videos with a credit line, which spreads it further, and businesses that want Mellow Mosaic in their posts or ads can buy a license. The radio keeps the music playing for anyone who wants it in the background.
We'll update these numbers as new reports come in.
Written by Suman Kumar with AI help and checked before publishing. Every figure comes from our DistroKid royalty export (sale months December 2024 to August 2026) and our Spotify for Artists export of 13 September 2026.