Spotify’s average per-stream payout has fallen by 16% since 2014, according to a new dataset published by artist-rights blog The Trichordist.

The figures are based on 2016 streaming data for an independent label with around 150 albums available digitally, which is compared to a similar study in 2014.

According to the analysis, Spotify generated $0.00437 per stream for the label in 2016, down from $0.00521 in 2014. Yet Spotify accounted for 69.6% of the label’s overall streaming revenues: its per-stream rate may have fallen, but its scale still makes it the major earner for this particular catalogue.

(Additional context: if Spotify users have become more engaged in its service over time, listening to more music by more artists, that would be a factor in the falling average per-stream payout. When Spotify relaunched its artists portal in November 2016, it stopped publishing its own figure for average per-stream payout to all rightsholders.)

Read the post on Music Ally