Of course they are paying out the majority of their revenue to the people who are actually responsible for making the music i.e. the artists and the labels who represent them.
And it's legitimate for artists to criticise the lower per-stream royalty when they see Spotify paying people like Joe Rogan pretty exorbitant amounts of money. And when many of them aren't signed with large labels but are instead going through self-service labels where the artist collects most of the royalties.
Yes, and middle men get squeezed. Their customers want to pay less over time, and their suppliers want them to pay more.
It's one thing if you're taking raw materials and building something of value and reselling it. But I see this turning into record labels creating their own streaming services, much like Peacock+/Apple+/Universal+/etc.
It's not hard to imagine a world where you have to pay $100/year to stream Pink Floyd from the Warner Music catalog.
Of course they are paying out the majority of their revenue to the people who are actually responsible for making the music i.e. the artists and the labels who represent them.
And it's legitimate for artists to criticise the lower per-stream royalty when they see Spotify paying people like Joe Rogan pretty exorbitant amounts of money. And when many of them aren't signed with large labels but are instead going through self-service labels where the artist collects most of the royalties.