A version of this article originally appeared on Hypebot.
How much do artists earn when they put their music online? A new infographic from data scientist David McCandless of Information Is Beautiful offers an answer. He looks at how much artists earn using various distributors and retailers from Bandcamp to iTunes when they sell online, and pulls data to examine what streaming services like Spotify, Deezer, and Beats pay.
McCandless' comparisons are not always apples to apples, as a careful look at the graphic reveals. Right now, Beats Music pays more per stream than Spotify, for example, but Spotify delivers many more streams. And exactly how much of any of this income filters to artists varies widely depending on individual contracts.
Still, the 2015 edition of "Selling Out: How Much Do Music Artists Earn Online" is a great place to start and destined to be the conversation-starter it was when McCandless published the first version way back in 2010.
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Curious about how Spotify calculates its royalties? Click here for the answers!
Bruce Houghton is the editor and publisher at Hypebot.