AI Music Acts Have Earned Millions From Streaming, Study Finds

A new study from AI-powered content creation platform Kapwing estimates the biggest AI music acts are pulling six- and seven-figure sums from streaming. The top 10 have amassed over $6 million from more than 2.3 billion combined Spotify streams and YouTube views.

The team at Kapwing built its seed list from the AiMCharts database and pulled streams, followers, playlists and charting data from Songstats, then applied estimated royalty rates on a per-play basis.

Who's Leading the AI Streaming Economy

By their math, 1950s-style blues persona Enlly Blue leads Spotify with an estimated $380,800 from 95.2 million streams. Cherry 葵 Nightcore tops YouTube at roughly $2 million from 941 million views. Suno-powered synth-rock project Masters of Prophecy holds the largest cross-platform appeal with 36.1 million followers, and comedian King Willonius, of BBL Drizzy fame, logs 500 platform chart entries, the most in the study.

These artists are the exceptions, and the exceptions are rare, at least for now. In July, Deezer reported that AI cleared 50% of the platform's daily uploads at June's peak, amounting to roughly 90,000 tracks a day, but consistently measures AI at only 1% to 3% of actual listening. An estimated $4.6 billion in annual artist revenue could be lost to AI-generated music by 2028, according to a recent economic study conducted by CISAC and PMP Strategy with participation from Deezer.

Chart Success and Platform Response

The tracks that do break through and achieve broader distribution are taking chart positions with them. Recently, Josh Fawaz's AI-generated dance cover of Madonna's "Like a Prayer" eclipsed 39 million Spotify streams and spent four weeks atop Australia's national airplay chart. The controversial creator added a "GenerativeAI" credit to the track only after an ABC investigation. At the $0.004 per stream Kapwing used in their model, that single record clears roughly $156,000.

Meanwhile, the rules of streaming are being rewritten in real time. Tidal has stopped paying out royalties on fully AI-generated tracks, and a coalition including the RIAA and the Grammys have proposed industry-standard labeling and disclosures that effectively separate AI-generated recordings from AI-assisted ones.

The full report from Kapwing is available online.