Culture

‘Napster Still Exists?!?!’: T-Pain Goes Viral In Tweet Exposing How Little Streaming Services Pay Music Artists

#Music
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Rapper T-Pain reveals streaming service payouts in viral tweet. Highest to pay for streams is Napster, which shocks Twitter users.

Getty Image / Kevin Winter/Getty Images for iHeartMedia


Singer T-Pain garnered tens of thousands of reactions with a viral tweet shedding light on how little music artists get paid on streaming services. Twitter users were most shocked that Napster still exists.

The Bartender singer shared an infographic of how many streams it takes for a music artist to earn $1 from popular streaming platforms, and captioned the tweet: “Just so you know.”

Shockingly enough, the old school music service Napster paid artists the most – 53 streams to make $1, according to the graphic. Tidal Music was second-highest at 78 streams to make $1, followed by Apple Music at 128, then Deezer at 156, 249 streams for Amazon Music, 315 for Spotify, 752 streams for a buck from Pandora, and YouTube Music paid out a minuscule dollar for every 1,250, according to the graphic.

If Napster is paying out well, that must mean that Kazaa and LimeWire must be making it rain on music artists.

The tweet from the famed auto-tune singer received over 25,000 retweets and nearly 110,000 Likes. There were also thousands of reactions on Twitter, including hundreds of people who were surprised that

  • “Finding out Napster still exists is a damn plot twist.”
  • “Napster being the highest paying platform is some serious M. Night Shyamalan sh-t.”
  • “Plot twist! 20 years later and Napster now pays artists the most for streaming music.”
  • “Napster did more for artists than Spotify by a factor of like 5, wild how narratives have shifted to where this is now ‘business practice.'”
  • “Surprised to see @napster go from villain to the hero of this story.”
  • “People laughing about Napster but I’m about to go check them out if they’re paying creators good like that.”
  • “Anyone else turn ‘Today Years Old’ to find out Napster is still around?”
  • “YouTube needs to get its act together.”
  • “How come someone just doesn’t play a music video on repeat everyday to make money?”
  • “If this chart is accurate, this is how many streams it would take an artist just to make $36K, the real median income of an individual American. Youtube/Google 45M Spotify 11.3M Amazon 8M Apple 4.6M Tidal 2.8M Napster 1.9M Reminder that 1M purchases takes a single platinum.”

Other Twitter reactions: