If consumers don't have the willingness to pay for a media service that not only covers operational costs of distribution but also fairly compensates those involved in making the media, then... that sounds pretty much like the definition of unethical and unsustainable. You can argue that the cause is consumer price sensitivity and it still won't change the ethics and sustainability issue. Although I think that's also missing the point, which has to include how consumers came to have this expectation in the first place, and the role that Spotify has played in setting that expectation.

When a Spotify exec called artists "entitled" for wanting payouts on the order of a penny a stream last summer [0], I went looking around to see if anyone was doing better and approaching that. Turned out Apple Music had gone there [1].

Maybe that's recently become possible with the economics of current digital distribution tech. Maybe Apple has an edge from leveraging infrastructure they need for other services anyway. Maybe they're subsidizing it. I don't know. But I do know that the economics of streaming services have to include substantial efforts to do right by media creators with audiences at multiple scales if they're to remain ethical.

[0] https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/06/29/spotify-executiv...

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387453/apple-music-arti...