Spotify popularity doesn’t bring in cash directly, but it leads to increased ticket sales for live shows. And Spotify will recommend you to new listeners in a way that piracy won’t.

I have a personal example: Spotify recommended a band to me that I’ve now seen live three times, and they’re so obscure that I never would have heard of them without it. None of my friends knew them either.

Yes, but Spotify increasly does nothing against AI generated music that gets inserted into playlists, auto recommendation feature, ...

So now, artists are competing against AI generated music, that is often manipulated to take listening spots away from actual artists.