> Those are two different things. Recording artist does not always equal songwriter. So how much should the songwriter make? The recording studio? The audio engineer? All the other people involved in creating the recorded song? Now that it's made, how do you get people to know the song exists and want to listen to it, much less purchase it?

Why are any of these the distribution medium's (or better, listener's) problem? The songwriter, recording studio, audio engineer, marketing firm, etc should be paid for their services at their standard rates at the time the service is performed. The artist is the one who should accept this risk. Just like.. basically everything else in the world. The plumber who installed an office sink is not entitled to some fraction of the occupying organization's revenue, right?

> But that is so much work that they would need to already have an income stream to give them the time to do it all

Which is why labels exist. They take the risk on, and pre-pay for (everything), in exchange for the lion's share of potential revenue. Artists are, of course, welcome to stay unsigned and handle all the risk and rewards themselves, but that typically isn't a good value prop.

IMO everything here is working as designed, including Spotify. The author just doesn't understand that "artists getting paid fractions of pennies per stream" is exactly what should happen.