Fans Are Shocked To Learn Napster Is Still Around After T-Pain Shares A Dubious List Of Streaming Payouts

Seemingly every couple of months, Twitter lights up with (very important) conversations about how little artists actually get paid every time their song gets streamed. It varies between streaming services, but according to the RIAA’s 2020 report, Spotify averages $.00437 per stream while Apple Music averages about $.00783. However, the company that pays artists the most per stream is pretty surprising, seeing how it’s oftentimes credited for nearly killing the music industry: Napster.

Thanks to a recent tweet by T-Pain, fans were shocked to learn that Napster still actually exists seeing as the company filed for bankruptcy in 2002 after losing a wave of copyright infringement lawsuits. T-Pain shared a screenshot of a dubious chart originally posted to Reddit which claims how many times a song has to be streamed on a given platform in order for the musician to make $1. T-Pain’s chart shows an artist’s song on Napster has to be streamed 53 times in order to make $1, which is actually accurate per the RIAA’s 2020 report, compared to 315 streams on Spotify (although RIAA’s numbers show it’s more like 229 times).

While it’s fairly well-known that Spotify is one of the biggest streaming platforms with one of the worst artist payouts, fans on Twitter were even more surprised that Napster is still around. T-Pain’s tweet instantly made Napster trend on Twitter, with many people reacting to the news that Napster essentially went from “villain” to the “hero” of streaming.

Others were simply reminiscing on the times they stayed up all night downloading a few songs on Napster.