Made up example: $100000000 * 0.0000001 of all listening activity = $10
Or $10 * 1 of all my listening activity = $10
Or are you saying that Spotify cuts off at a certain point and doesn't pay anything out, or that they take a fixed cut after allocation?
With the current model, if I do that, Artist X gets paid near zero. So you can see how the models are indeed different.
Getting 100% of your subscription is the same thing as getting 1% from everyone out of 100 customers, where only one person (you) listen to that artist (and exclusively).
That 99% of "your" money went to an artist you dislike doesn't matter if 1% of everyone else's money went to the artist you do like. The money doesn't know where it came from, and the artist doesn't care. Only the aggregate distribution matters.
Now I don't know how they do their reward distribution, I'm merely pointing out the flaw in your reasoning.
Which is exactly the current situation, by the way. Anyway, what I was doing was just demonstrating that the system is not the same.
Although I am admittedly bad at maths and statistics, it seems to me that the system I am proposing would be more likely to pay out at least coffee change to small-time artists. I might be wrong, though.
Basically I think it's unfair and unintuitive how everything I pay goes to artists I don't listen to. There has to be a better system.