Erick Sermon Explains How Drake Makes Massive Money On Streaming

Is streaming good or bad for the record industry?

In an interview with 93.5, EPMD's Erick Sermon argues that it's been good and uses numbers to prove his point.

"One million streams is eight thousand dollars. So if Drake's got 17 records doing that, which he does. He has billions of streams you can imagine what he's looking like," Sermon said.

(Sermon may be a bit off on his math here. Apple pays around that, but Spotify is closer to $4,000 per million and YouTube is way down around a thousand.)

Then he dropped this tidbit about Drake's fellow streaming god Post Malone's latest negotiations.

"They offered Post Malone a check for three million. Three million? So they wrote him a check for $50 million."

Sermon went on to say that if Post and Drake are making that kind of cash, the labels are making much, much more. He then pointed out that major label Universal makes more money now than they did before the streaming revolution, even though they have a lot fewer imprints.