> I don't like what they do to artists

Not sure if you're aware, but it's the labels, not Spotify:

> It pays roughly two-thirds of every dollar it generates from music, with nearly 80% allocated to recording royalties and about 20% to publishing, though how much artists and songwriters ultimately receive depends on their agreements with rights holders, which Spotify does not control. [0]

Spotify is frantically trying to escape the record label's death grip (hence podcasts), because they know they can squeeze it for just about anything with licensing deals. It's a terrible business model! Spotify keeps a third for their costs (& finally some profit in the past year or two), ie. about the same that Apple takes from App Store for basically nothing[1].

How the record labels convinced the world that Spotify is the bad guy here is beyond belief.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/sofiachierchio/2026/01/28/spoti...

[1] Certainly app store costs are nothing when compared to the infrastructure that Spotify needs.

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PunchyHamster 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Not sure if you're aware, but it's the labels, not Spotify:

*not only Spotify

They had plenty of problems from people abusing their system to steal listens from actual artists.

Their system is basically "one big bucket of listens" - if your song gets listens, you get money. So if you pay your sub, and listen to say 5 niche musicians only, it still all goes mostly to the most popular songs.

Now you might already notice the flaw here - if you say, make a bunch of bots that just listen to songs to boost their revenue, not only your sub doesn't pay artists you listen, but also to fraudulent ones.

Then there was problems with using fake collaboration tags, AI music to hijack artist profiles, and few others.

	▲	senko 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Their system is basically "one big bucket of listens" - if your song gets listens, you get money. So if you pay your sub, and listen to say 5 niche musicians only, it still all goes mostly to the most popular songs. That's basically how radio is accounted for in royalties, as well. With Spotify knowing exactly who listened to what, it could be more precise (and arguably more susceptible to the fraud), but tbh what they do is standard (compulsory licensing) industry practice.

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cm2012 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Spotify paid out ten billion dollars to artists in 2024. This is not small potatoes - total 2024 music industry merchandise sales was around $14b.

These big platform payouts matter a lot.

	▲	lostlogin 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Whenever an actual artist reveals their earnings, it’s absolutely pitiful. A quick search suggests a very steep drop off from the top earners. ‘At 100 million streams, artists can earn approximately $300,000-$500,000 in gross royalties. However, the actual amount reaching the artist varies dramatically based on their contracts. Major label artists receive $90,000-$150,000 after the label’s cut, while independent artists could keep $255,000-$425,000 after distributor fees.’ https://rebelmusicz.com/how-much-do-artists-make-on-spotify/
	▲	senko 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Correction: to record labels. When you read artists' blog posts you can see they get peanuts. Not due to Spotify - due to the recording deals. If you want an exhaustive but eye-opening account of all of the details, I recommend "All you need to know about the music business" by Don Passman.