It’s not just that. The distribution models also discriminates against small bands. If the four bands I’ve listened to in December received 70% of my Spotify subscription payment, this would be much less of a problem.
That's a very important point. I know some indie artists who get way less than a subscription's worth of money each month, while having a bunch of "superfans" who mostly listen to their their music.
Basically the money we pay is not going to the bands we listen to. It's being used to appease some larger pop artist so they won't leave the platform. Or to finance the platform itself.
This Lack of transparency from streaming services is a much bigger problem than the amount of money paid per stream.
Sure one can argue that Spotify is free to do whatever they want with the money, but it's still not a fair deal for small artists.
From what I have seen, the pay is entirely by listen count and not taking the users subscription and dividing it by the % you listened to each artist. So if someone subscribed to Spotify and listens to 10 songs in the month, most of their subscription goes in to the pool and pays for people who had lady Gaga on 24/7 for a month.
