There are a lot of comments saying Spotify can't raise prices - but Netflix has repeatedly raised prices successfully. I'm now paying them double what I originally did when I signed up.
Looking at my local pricing, the lowest plan (€7.99) is $2 cheaper than the single plan that was available when I signed up (€9.99), and the equivalent plan to what was available then is (€12.99). So that's a 33% increase in 5 years, which is much less dramatic than the 100%-200% increase spotify would need for the suggested payouts.
There's a lot of account sharing or rotating streaming service or plain old fashioned piracy (the "dodgy box", formerly a pirate satellite receiver and now usually a kodi box with a frontend to some pirate stream provider, has been more common in Ireland the last few years than since digital TV was just coming in and competing with free to air broadcast TV).