h/t to Alex Tabarrok who posted about a Classicfm.com story on how much money classical music composers would make from Spotify streams of their music.
Using the estimate figure of $0.0037 (£0.0028) in earnings per stream, and calculating for inflation, the website revealed the following ranking of classical music’s highest paid Spotify composers.
Top 10 classical composers based on 2021 earnings
Bach: 6.7 million monthly plays, $299,329 (£222,327) annual earnings
Beethoven: 6.5 million monthly plays, $286,353 (£212,689) annual earnings
Mozart: 6 million monthly plays, $266,649 (£198,054) annual earnings
Chopin: 5.4 million monthly plays, $238, 290 (£176,990) annual earnings
Debussy: 4.6 million monthly plays, $204,259 (£151,713) annual earnings
Vivaldi: 3.6 million monthly plays, $159,975 (£118,821) annual earnings
Schubert: 2.9 million monthly plays, $127,017 (£94,342) annual earnings
Brahms: 2.6 million monthly plays, $113,871 (£84,578) annual earnings
Handel: 2.519 million monthly plays $111,832 (£83,063) annual earnings
Liszt: 2.516 million monthly plays $111,746 (£83,000) annual earnings
In case you were wondering, Bach’s “‘Prélude’ from Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major” is his most frequently played piece; Beethoven’s “‘Adagio’ from his ‘Moonlight’ Sonata No. 14,” is his most popular piece.
Tabbarok mentioned that as composers would actually get less money than reported since composer royalties are actually a smaller percentage of a play. With the possible exception of Debussy who did record his own music, the millions of plays reported are recordings by myriad entities rather than the composers. If Spotify/recording technology and the composers existed contemporaneously, a recording of their personal performances would be available for play.