A question: Why do musicians put their music on Spotify if they make so little of it.

If the answer is that it's the labels who owns the rights and puts the music there, then the next question is why do the labels do it if Spotify pays so little.

If the answer is that Spotify pays decently to the labels, then isn't all of this just the labels exploiting the artists as usual?

Am not an expert at Spotify, but for at least the musicians i know, they self-publish these days, so it's really not about the labels. For us, Spotify is just another way of getting our music out there. Yeah, we can build a very small audience who'll follow our music, but more over, it's just a way to point interested producers, venues, musicians or listeners to our music.

And actually Spotify hasn't been profitable until 2024. It seems like the problem is streaming music is not a great business model. They pay a tons to labels and (big name) artists, but only get a set subscription fee from its listeners.

It's a the lesser of two evils, because without it, people would go back to bittorrenting music or using things like the Apple Store, where you don't have to buy an entire album, you can just buy only the songs you like for a couple bucks.