> Large-scale distribution is expensive and complicated.
Not anymore. Most CDN's will do that for free. Distribution is easy. Spotify makes money because open source pirating networks attract the attention of law enforcement.
At the scale of Spotify and FAANG, hosting that data gets really expensive, really fast. It's again, why Amazon is a trillionarire from giving "cheap server data" to billionaires.
It's also tech literacy. Artists under may be able to host their own servers, but not well. They'd be the biggest targets of all the big hacks (which still happen to said billion dollar corps in 2023), you would want someone who can secure them for you. And they may not know how to host a server to begin with.
It's also tech literacy. Artists under may be able to host their own servers, but not well. They'd be the biggest targets of all the big hacks (which still happen to said billion dollar corps in 2023), you would want someone who can secure them for you. And they may not know how to host a server to begin with.