Drake Makes Around $3 Million From Pandora Radio

Hip hop artist Drake is just one of the many musicians making quite a bit of money from Pandora Radio, according to Business Insider. Drake, as well as fellow hip-hop artist Lil Wayne, reportedly make an impressive $3 million from the streaming music service. Those who feel such business ventures aren’t exactly lucrative should probably talk to the aforementioned artists who are currently cashing large paychecks.

As CEO Tim Westergren pointed out, some musician’s who haven’t enjoyed mainstream success are still making quite a bit of money from Pandora. “These are all working artists who live well outside the mainstream — no steady rotation on broadcast radio, no high profile opening slots on major tours, no front page placement in online retail,” he explained in a recent blog post.

The Next Web explains that Pandora is paying out anywhere between $70 million and $100 million to the artists that allow their music to appear on the streaming service. Within the next year, the company will fork over $10,000 to approximately two thousand artists, while over 800 musicians will reportedly receive around $50,000. If you’re a budding artist trying to carve out a slice of the dream for yourself, these numbers aren’t too shabby.

“It’s hard to look at these numbers and not see that internet radio presents an incredible opportunity to build a better future for artists,” Westergren explained. “Not only is it bringing tens of millions of listeners back to music, across hundreds of genres, but it is also enabling musicians to earn a living. Since Pandora accounts for just 6.53% of all radio listening in the U.S., it seems fundamentally unfair that other forms of radio that represent much larger shares of U.S. radio listening pay substantially less to artists.”

Is $3 million a fair price to pay someone as popular as Drake to license his music? Do you think streaming services like Pandora and Spotify are the wave of the future?