[tensor]

I don't think there is any "quibble" involved in whether record labels are good or bad for artists. And claiming that the alternative is "torrenting" is really throwing in a huge strawman.

The alternative to Spotify and the traditional record labels are places like Bandcamp, where artists get a far more significant portion of the earned money. Any industry where 99% of the money goes to the middle man or service provider rather than the creator is an industry in dire need of disruption.

My limited understanding is that Getty is at least as bad as the music industry, if not much worse. No doubt Getty will make millions of dollars from their AI image generator, while the artists may get a few cents a year if they are lucky.

edit: also, re spotify, as far as I'm aware they do carry small and independent labels. Getty is comparable to the big music labels, not to spotify.

[chankstein38]

Anyone can, through a service such as DistroKid, publish their music on spotify without a label. You can even enter your own label name so yeah spotify very much seems pretty label agnostic. Not sure how much the big labels end up paying them at the end of the day though.