Just to clarify: you think it's fair that less than 20% of what you pay to Spotify goes to artists?
So the percent paid is higher as far as gross in, gross to artists. But the outlier rates are lower because there’s no special contracts.
I guess an equivalent is how much is the total ad revenue for radio vs what’s paid to artists (not labels).
Or the total revenue made from music retailers CS what’s paid to artists.
The novelty with streaming is there aren’t tons of steps and indirections.
Why doesn't Paul McCartney, who's extremely wealthy, spin up a music app to stream his stuff and ask people to pay for it? Because he wouldn't make any money from after setting up the infrastructure, marketing it, paying people, etc...