Shawn Mendes Is Highest Paid Artist Per Word
If you’ve ever wondered what artists earn per word for their music, wonder no more because we found this awesome little list that breaks it down.
By nowproducerdave on April 12, 2018
Someone had a lot of time to figure this out. Shawn Mendes earns the most money per word out of all other artists, says a website called Expert Market. He earned $5,341 per word for his songs in 2017.
Here’s how they came to their figures. They literally counted all the words in most of the top songs by the top singers for 2017. Once they had their numbers, the team then did the math based on the amount of cash the songs earned from streaming in 2017. Here’s the interesting part – Shawn Mendes only released one song in 2017 – “There’s Nothing Holding Me Back.” Spotify paid Shawn Mendes $1.832 million. In that song, Shawn Mendes sings 343 words, which worked out to that $5,341 per word sang. The title alone is worth $25k every time he sings it in the song. Not a bad payday at all! Ed Sheeran made $1,805.69 per word for “Shape of You.” Taylor Swift earned $406.48 for “Look What You Made Me Do,” but that song also came out towards the end of the year. She came in at #86 on the list.
See also: Shawn Mendes made list of most dangerous music to drive to.
Other artists included in the study? Justin Bieber earned $4,079 per word for “Friends,” and $3,798.75 per word for “Despacito.” Sam Hunt earned $2,999.02 for “Body Like a Backroad,” Zedd & Alessia Cara earned $2,730.49 per word for the song “Stay.” Kesha made the lowest-paid list at just $292.81 per word (which still isn’t bad honestly) for “Praying.” Eminem made that list too (but to be totally honest he has so many words in each of his songs it kind of skews towards unfair to rate earnings per word there) for his song “River” which also featured Ed Sheeran. The whole list of 100 artists and what they earned per word is over here. So if you’ve ever wondered what sort of money per word artists make, well, this is a good reference.
