[parpfish]

complaints about spotify payment will almost always have a critique along the lines of

"i pay $10/month to listen to {obscure band}, but only $1/month is going to that band and the rest is going to {popular band}!"

this is a technically true statement that seems to fuel a lot of anti-rich-getting-richer / popular-thing-is-bad-but-my-taste-is-good backlash. but the fact that is always overlooked is that while you are only sending $1/month to the obscure band you love, the millions of listeners that are into {popular band} will also be sending a tiny fraction of their monthly payment to your artist as well.

determining whether pro-rata payments or user-centric payment systems are more equitable is complex and is studied in the academic literature (e.g., [0]) but ALSO internally by streaming providers (i know from firsthand experience[1]).

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517652...

[1] it's interesting to note that the difference between the payment systems affects how payments are distributed to artists but not the total amount, so theoretically the streaming provider isn't biased toward one system over another for business reasons. the streaming platfroms don't really care one way or another and it's 100% driven by what the labels dictate during licensing negotiations.