Thought experiment.
Imagine I only listen to one song in one month by one band who currently make ~0 on Spotify.
In my new system, they now make £10.
Imagine I only listen to one song in one month by one band who currently make ~0 on Spotify.
In my new system, they now make £10.
You could just as easily have an enthusiast who finds a few new indie albums per month and listens to them all the way through, or someone who leaves a top-40 playlist on in the background.
This just could not happen with what I’m suggesting.
Example: The band above, which earned < £200 must have at least 2 million streams a year = 166,666 a month
For simplicity let’s assume each of those 166,666 streams is a unique user. Each also listens to 1999 other songs that month (about 5 hours a day of music seems average?)
So each owes the artist 1/2000 of their £10 subscription = $0.005
166,666 streamers * $0.005 = £833.33 a month = £10,000 a year.
Let the law of large numbers do its work.
A band only needs a few hundred fans to easily get above that.
Let’s do some math:
100 fans listen to their music only 5% of the time.
100 fans x £10 x 12 months = £12000.
Your 5% of their listening gives you £600.
3 X higher than 80% of bands. And with only 100 fans. And only listening to your music 5% of the time!
I am not sure how this works in regards to economies of scale. However all artists are free (except for contractual agreements) to release their art independently and keep the whole pie.
Let's take your £10. Now spotify has operational costs, staff salaries, operational costs. How much is your £10 worth now?
Well its not actually too hard to work out you could take a look at the balance sheet. But I gather your £10 is worth quite substantially less.
This does not include any further cuts like for the record label, song writers, produces, marketing etc.
TL;DR; your £10 is not worth £10 if you factor in other overheads.