AMUSING, INTERESTING, OUTRAGEOUS, or PROFOUND

We're probably on the same page of billionaires should not exist. The argument gets convoluted all the time though and reduced down to rich guy makes more than starving artists, which is misleading in my opinion.

The CEO of Spotify hasn't taken a salary in 7 years. In 2024, he sold $320 million of stock which is only a fraction of his $7.5 billion net worth. Realistically, much of his net worth has likely come from investing his payouts into other things that have nothing to do with Spotify.

The Spotify market cap is $100 billion. Which means investors, retail included, keep pumping money into the company because clearly users keep using it. So is the real issue one guy? Or all of us who want a lot for a little, whether it be unlimited music access, or for our $200 on Robinhood to become $300.

To my original point, in a crowded field of nearly 10 million bands/artists streaming their music on these services, if you care about their success as a consumer the best way to support them currently is live shows and merch. It's okay that you're not into either of those, but even if you could choose which artists your monthly $10 is allocated to, it wouldn't be enough for everyone to get fed with all the competition out there.

Tidal, which is currently the 'best' in terms of streaming payouts pays 3x higher to artists than Spotify. The problem is likely scalability though. If people left Spotify en masse and went to Tidal, their server costs go up, they need to hire more staff etc. They'd end up probably very similar to Spotify on the long run.

And I'm not trying to give you sass or argue, but I feel like your comment supported my point. You said you have hundreds of artists in your favorites, that you don't prefer to go to shows, or want to buy merch, all of which is fine and your choice. But when you extrapolate your hundreds, against my hundreds, against the 9.8 million other bands/artists on these streaming services, $10 a month minus the operating costs of the company that provides that service to us, of course it's not enough. So again, yeah, fuck billionaires, but like, one dude is not the end all be all problem and all I was saying was it's a reduction argument that is overused.