I have worked for a tech company in the music licensing area, so all I would say is that it’s highly likely that Spotify is having to provide detailed and granular reporting to the rights holders (i.e. the labels) about how much of what gets streamed. EDIT - and pay the rights holders accordingly.
At that point, the rights holders will be making the decision (based on contracts) about how they distribute that money. It gets complicated quickly, as things are split up based on artistry, producers, engineers, songwriting (publishing rights) etc.
So actually, yes it’s quite likely that the artists you listen to are getting something. The issue is that it’s a very small amount per stream, so obviously the bigger artists make serious money and the smaller ones don’t.
Frankly, that isn’t a new problem but just a repackaging of the same issues that have always existed. The industry is bloated and the royalty management systems are slow beyond belief. I totally accept that smaller artists might have made more money in the old days if they sold CDs etc, but honestly it probably wasn’t great then either. Artists gave up a lot to the labels that funded their recording/studio/distribution/marketing in the first place.
Of course, you can be entrepreneurial and try to run your own music nights etc, but I know people who promoted their own nights and lost plenty of money. It’s just hard to get people to pay much for music, plain and simple.
I had a friend who used to work on the management team for an huge internationally known electronic act (you would all know them) and we sat in the pub and chatted the economics once or twice. He said that they sold about 30-40k physical copies of an album they released, and there really wasn’t that much left over at the end once all the money had trickled up the tree.
The music industry has always been tough on artists. It’s like being an actor - good luck if you can’t climb very far up the business, but if you reach the top you’ll get very well paid.
I don’t want to be a hypocrite here so I’ll just say that I do use Spotify because I bought a household account as a gift for my wife. She loves it and uses it loads, I use it a bit. It’s easy and it helps me find new music.
I think companies will always find new models and technologies and ways to sell things to the public. The old models weren’t perfect and nor are any of the new ones.
As for Joe Rogan etc, not a fan of these pretend experts on every subject spreading BS but somebody else would be paying them if Spotify wasn’t, it’s free market economics. When some shock jock loses their job, the next station just scoops them up to grab the audience.
