Song artists better not want to be billionaires too $#!%ing bad. Matthew Panzarino found out how much an artist makes when we buy one of their songs through iTunes or other services. His findings include:

• Streaming a song through iTunes makes an artist less than one third of a cent ($0.00330). This means that the song requires at least three plays just to make a penny.
• Spotify pays more by almost paying a cent for each play ($0.009669).
• But to list their songs artists need to pay an annual fee of $50. This means they need over 15,000 plays of their songs on iTunes just to break even (the number for Spotify is the somewhat better 5,171.)

Read more about how best to help your favourite artist and the fate of local artists over here.

Source: The Next Web