Which artist earns the most per word? The answer may surprise you

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Brian ZiffWe all know our favorite singers can earn millions of dollars from streaming, but how much does that come out to per word? The folks at ExpertMarket.com crunched the numbers, and the winner is one 19-year-old kid from Toronto.

According to the website, none other than Shawn Mendes pulls in the most bucks per word: $5,341 per, to be specific.  How’d they come up with that figure?  By counting the number of words in the most popular songs released by top artists in 2017, and then dividing the words by how much money each song earned in streams.

Shawn only released one song in 2017: “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back.”  According to ExpertMarket, he earned $1.832 million bucks from Spotify streams of that one song, and there are 343 words in the song, counting repeats.  That works out to $5,341 per word, or over $25,000 just for singing the song’s title.

By comparison, Shawn’s fellow Canadian pop star, Justin Bieber, earned $4,079 per word for his 2017 release, “Friends,” a collabo with Bloodpop.  Other top lyrical earners include Marshmello‘s “Silence,” Khalid‘s “Young Dumb and Broke,” and the “Despacito” remix by Luis Fonsi, Justin and Daddy Yankee.

The lowest-earning musician per lyric?  That’d be Eminem, but mostly because his songs have so many lyrics.  For his biggest hit of 2017, “River,” featuring Ed Sheeran, he earned just under 59 bucks per word.

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