You can't even pay money up front to upload to spotify, you have to get a paid subscription to a service last time I checked.
> To get your music on Spotify, you need to work with a distributor, or with a record label who already has a distributor. They handle all the licensing and distribution, and pay your streaming royalties.
Kinda odd, why would Spotify not just let you enter an IBAN and send you your share as soon as you accumulated a minimum of €10 or something? Regardless, I see this is not as easy as signing up for YouTube and making money off of adds there.
I suppose I didn't mean Spotify very specifically, it just happened to be the example and I figured they'd rather have a broader selection of music for their subscribers; the point however works just as well with YouTube or other services.
I used CDBaby[0] since I had only one album and don't expect the 9% revenue cut they take to amount to more than the one-time $30 fee.
If you're more prodigious and commercially ambitious, Distrokid[1] charges $20/year and takes no revenue cut at all. (It was even endorsed by the founder of CDBaby on this very site[2]!)
[0] https://cdbaby.com/ [1] https://distrokid.com/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6519175