Spotify pays artists the smallest amount they can possibly get away with without getting sued. Which is a tiny amount. Spotify is owned by music industry giants who needed a new money-grabbing scheme when the older schemes of the 70s-90s failed in the internet era.

Is it really much different to how much artists got from radio?

Most artists never got radio money because it went into a label slush fund and was spent retaining the tent pole artists.

The overall economics are wildly different.

Radio didn't pay much, but it was promotion for the album.

Spotify doesn't pay much, and it _replaces_ the album.

CD sales didn't pay much, because it all went to the labels.

A million album sales generates $2-3m for the artist under a typical label deal.

150,000,000 streams typically generates $560k _before_ the label cut.

Your posts make clear that you're a wildly immoral person -- not just because you repeatedly lie and distort to defend your position -- but the crux of your argument is "artists had a mediocre deal, so it is fine that the new deal is dramatically worse".

There's no way to respond to that.

> but the crux of your argument is "artists had a mediocre deal, so it is fine that the new deal is dramatically worse".

No it's not. I'm saying that artists have always had a shit deal, singling out Spotify doesn't help the systematic problems. I don't use Spotify, I purchase via Bandcamp but that's also because long term its cheaper for me.

> Your posts make clear that you're a wildly immoral person

I'm immoral because I don't think that artists have ever had it good? Alright Mr. RIAA.

https://sociallifemagazine.com/the-archive/90s-record-deals-...

"Is it really much different to how much artists got from radio?" is a weird way of stating that artists should be paid more.

If you actually want to defend artists... I suggest _not_ drawing equivalence between the old (bad) deal, and the new (much worse) deal.

The big difference was radio wasn't on-demand. You couldn't just listen to a complete album. If you wanted to listen to your favorite artist, you couldn't do that on the radio without listening to a lot of other stuff.

Most artists didn't make money from album sales.

They received some money up front in a contract to record the album, and the label make the money from sales.

There is a reason the bands toured and sold teeshirts.

For a lot of artists they’re paid a rounding error. The core question is whether they’re paid enough to make a living from and the answer is no.