Follow the Money: The Rolling Stones

**Hannah Mullane** (0:03)
Vinyl Records, those thin round disks that you take for a spin on your record player, blasting music into living rooms the world over. I'm here at the Vinyl Factory in London, where they produce millions of records every year. We're at the factory because today on Business Daily on the BBC World Service, we're talking about The Rolling Stones' latest album release. And many of the band's biggest hits were printed right here, at what was then the Vinyl Pressing Factory for their record label, EMI.
The Rolling Stones pushed the physical limits of what a record could be. Alongside the music came artwork like the famous Hot Lips logo. Millions of record sales followed. Now they're releasing their 25th album in 2026 with New Challenges, a world where streaming dominates, where fans expect big performances in even bigger stadiums.
I'm Hannah Mullane and today on Follow the Money, we're looking at one of the biggest rock bands in the world, The Rolling Stones, and asking how they make their money in an ever changing digital landscape.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:14)
London, more than a quarter of a million fans of the Rolling Stones gathered in Hyde Park for a free show by the group who make their kind of music.

**Hannah Mullane** (1:22)
The Rolling Stones became a global success in 1965, topping the charts in more than 20 countries with I Can't Get No Satisfaction.
Back then, they made their money through selling records and playing live shows. Now you can reach audiences all over the world in seconds by uploading music to a streaming platform. In fact, according to industry figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, music streaming generated more than $22 billion globally last year, with 837 million people subscribing around the world. But is it worth spending money making new music when you're The Rolling Stones and you've got 24 albums in a back catalogue? Will Page is the author of the book Pivot and the former chief economist at Spotify.

**Will Page** (2:06)
I think the revolution that's happened with streaming comes down to one very simple expression. I preferred the earlier stuff. In an age of the CD or the download, if that band that you liked released an album and you preferred the earlier stuff, and you reached for the shelf to bring that old CD back again, nobody knew and we were none the wiser. So the value of the catalogue had no value other than the upfront transaction you paid for it when you went into HMV or Tire Records and purchased that CD.
Now, when you prefer the earlier stuff, not only do we know about it, we monetize it again and again, and just to remind the audience as well, that those streams from the back catalogue are profitable streams because there are catalogue streams. They've already recouped their advance. So there's no investment in generating demand for them. So it's almost like free money when the catalogue streams happen. So that's why catalogue is so valuable just now.

**Hannah Mullane** (2:56)
Making money every time someone plays your song, it's the benefit of streaming, but you need a lot of those plays to start making a profit. That's something Matt Lines can help us understand. Matt, how does making money from streaming actually work?

**Matt Lines** (3:08)
Well, there's a few variables at play here for how much an artist makes. Different streaming services pay different amounts per stream. That can vary from around 0.3 of a cent up to a whole cent per stream. So that means that for even the highest paying services, you need a hundred streams for one of your songs to even make a dollar. There's also how an artist's record deal is structured that can have an impact, whether the listener is on a paid or free subscription, and if the artist is also the songwriter of the music. So let's go for a ballpark figure. For an artist to earn between $30,000 to $50,000, they need to be streamed 10 million times.

**Hannah Mullane** (3:43)
So when the Rolling Stones release new music, how much do they make from that?

**Matt Lines** (3:46)
So as Will Page mentioned, the benefit artists like the Stones have is that the new music can bring a listener to the old and they make money from all of it. So in the run up to their new album, the Rolling Stones released two new tracks. And interestingly in that time, according to figures from Chart Metric, the band has seen their monthly listeners on Spotify rise by 3.5 million up to more than 30 million. So let's do the maths. On Spotify, the average stream earns the artist 0.3 of a cent. So 30 million in a month and that's $90,000.