[dlikhten]

Giving an artist 30 cents is already better. If making a dollar = playing a song 3500 times. That means that I can not possible listen to my most favorite artist enough to give them 1 dollar EVER. Maybe in my entire life. If they self-publish and I buy just 5 songs from them, I already did better than Spotify, and spotify gave me so much more. Spotify appears to be worse off because using Spotify its "free" and I have even less incentive to buy the real track.

tl;dr I could not agree with smackfu/article more, just pirate everything and donate $5 directly to your favorite artist, you already made them more money than spotify ever would for you. And your conscious is clear.