How much money will Shakira and Karol G make from their song ‘TQG’?
The song was listened to more than 11 million times in the first 11 hours on YouTube, with millions more streaming on Spotify.
In the early hours of Friday, 24 February the long-awaited release of TQG finally arrived. Shakira’s new song with Karol G sees the Colombian duo take aim at both Gerard Piqué and Anuel AA, ex-partners of each of the artists.
Following on from Shakira’s BZRP Music Sessions #53, the new song took just ten hours to reach ten million views on YouTube. TQG did not quite match the astonishing 3.6 million views on the Bizarrap within the first hour of its release, but it looks like Shakira has another massive commercial hit on her hands.
The song dropped less than half a day ago so it is difficult to predict exactly how high that view count will go, but it is certainly fair to assume that each artist is going to get a healthy financial boost from the track. Spotify have not yet confirmed how many streams the song has reached on their platform, but the number of listens on the Spotify version of Shakira’s BZRP track were roughly the same as the figure on YouTube, so we can use that as a benchmark once again.
See also: Piqué's family angered by Shakira’s most recent decision
We can estimate their earnings so far by looking at typical payment terms for the two major music streaming platforms. Spotify, created by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, gives artists between $0.002 and $0.005 for each listen. YouTube’s pay is significantly lower, providing just $0.00069 per view for artists.
This suggests that YouTube has provided roughly $7,590 for the 11 million streams. Assuming that a similar number have listened on Spotify, and that they are paid at the platform’s top rate of $0.005, that would have banked the pair around $55,000.
In total, more than $62,000 from the first 11 hours.
However Digital Music News reports that neither YouTube nor Spotify, the two companies that generate by far the most views, are not the ones that pay the best.
The honor of most generous streaming service goes to Tidal, which gives artists $0.01284 per stream. Close behind that is Apple Music with an average of $0.01 per listen, and Amazon Music at $0.00402.
How much money did Shakira earn from her song with Bizarrap?
To get an idea of what Shakira and Karol G could potentially earn from their new song, we can look to the sort of money that the former received for her song with Bizarrap.
On YouTube, Session #53 surpassed 351 million views, which would have earned the artists nearly $250,000. On Spotify the same song has been listened to more than 335 million times, which would have been worth more than $1,000,000 in streaming dividends alone.