Wow. This is certainly a take. Two things:
1. Spotify has had a policy for a couple years now of not paying artists who generate less than 1,000 streams per year PER song. So if I get 999 streams on each of my 50 songs every year, I get nothing from Spotify.
2. Major labels own major stakes in Spotify. They are one and the same.
Ad. 1, I’m not saying Spotify is perfect, though in this case I would not be surprised if the algorithm was mandated by the record labels as the industry standard.
Ad 2, you’ll be surprised to hear the labels only held cumulative 20% stake up to the IPO and all of them subsequently wound it down. Their stake is now insignificant.
However, they had, have, and will always have, enormous leverage due to licensing-they’re monopolists and Spotify can either agree to whatever the terms are, or shut itself down.
Imagine if Netflix never started producing original content. They’d be at mercy of others or, more probably, already dead. Music doesn’t work that way and Spotify can’t just generate a bunch of pop hits to avoid paying the labels. They are trying to do that with podcasts.
Spotify here is the victim as much as the artists.
