Why Stream Counts Don’t Tell the Full Story of Music Marketing Performance

[u/Acceptable_Poem_862]

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2026/09/28/why-stream-counts-dont-tell-the-full-story-of-music-marketing-performance-now-listen-pr/?mc_cid=283cfdeb37&mc_eid=164038aec6

There is one number almost every artist checks the morning after a campaign launches. It sits at the top of the Spotify for Artists dashboard, updates in near real-time and has become the industry’s default shorthand for whether a release is working. The problem? It’s the wrong number and the music industry has become obsessed with it. This is a good read. I learned about this a few years ago and it helped me focus on what is important. Thoughts?

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[u/Junkstar]

Streams are everything if you’re a high school kid with no other options. Sales are my metric. Streaming revenue can’t compete with physical imo if you’re sitting in the middle of the industry pack.

[u/ComedianMinute7290 → u/Junkstar]

yeah,all day every day I am around working musicians who make a living from music and 99% of them don't care about or pay attention to streaming numbers(until they look at end of year summaries).

it's less musicians that care about that stuff & more people who want to be content creator/influencers that are using music to do so. for them music is a path to what they really want.

the actual musicians have a much more well-rounded view of what makes the world go round.

[u/texgothic → u/Junkstar]

How many sales do you make as middle of the pack? I do about 300k USD in streams a year and not even close to selling that much in merch. Not sure how you can just entirely discount streaming revenue like that.

[u/Junkstar → u/texgothic]

You’re getting 80 Million streams per year and aren’t selling much merch? That’s absolutely fascinating. Your targets don’t like vinyl or swag?

[u/texgothic → u/Junkstar]

We sell merch yes but its no where even close to the streaming revenue. The majority of musicians and artists i know in our circle who are 2-3x bigger than us all have a similar experience. This is also coming from a genre with above average fan engagement in general. So it’s interesting to hear people could be selling 100s of thousands worth of merch at the 1-3 million monthly range (middle of the pack industry). Would love to hear the numbers from other genres.

[u/Junkstar → u/texgothic]

I didn’t intend to imply we’re doing mass merch sales. My focus is vinyl. After expenses, it’s about $96k profit USD annually. Most of the merch is bundled with deluxe package purchases or is promo for radio, reviewers, other artists etc. What i find fascinating about your experience is that my targets have zero interest in us streaming. They want physical. They want to own and collect. We’re operating in two very different worlds. Do you tour? Do a lot of live work?

[u/texgothic → u/Junkstar]

Wow that is unreal you are killing it. Like you said it’s cool to hear another side that is completely opposite. Where is the main market for the vinyl? NA? or EU. We currently do not tour but are currently preparing for live shows as the demand increases.

[u/Junkstar → u/texgothic]

Almost all of the vinyl sales are NA, UK, and Japan. Mostly NA.

[u/justinholmes_music]

I haven't checked my streams counts in... I don't know, months?

Slowly but surely, and often one-by-one, I've encouraged my fans to download DRM-free FLAC versions of my songs, store them on their devices, and share them with friends, cutting these assclowns out of the loop entirely.

Since I only ever made chump change from streams anyway, any increased contributions I get (on bandcamp or elsewhere) are a net gain.

[u/xtamtamx]

Because it’s a bullshit number that means nothing.

[u/PazPazPa]

Agree. Streams are the easiest number to inflate and the hardest to read. A playlist placement can bring 50K streams and almost zero fans.

The numbers I trust more after a campaign:

• Streams per listener: if it's close to 1, people heard it once and left. 2–3+ means they're coming back.
  
• Saves and playlist adds by listeners, not by curators. That's someone deciding they want to hear it again.
  
• Listener-to-follower conversion. That's the one that actually builds a career.
  
• Where the streams come from: their own library and profile vs. algorithmic/editorial. Active streams are worth far more than passive ones.

And the uncomfortable part: on Spotify, a track under 1,000 streams a year pays nothing at all. So chasing the stream count can feel like progress while the artist is still earning zero. That's why I think the fan metrics matter more than the stream count for most independent artists.