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i cannot fathom how your example here supports the idea that Bieber playing 24/7 in a gym is stealing money from the niche artist who are listen to by only a handful of fans?

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I think the idea is that there are two Spotify subscribers in the whole world.

You, who listen to IndieBand™ for a total of an hour a week or so.

The Gym™ who plays Bieber 24/7 every day, all month.

You each pay $10 a month, so $20 total. Spotify allocates based on plays, so Bieber gets 720 "played hours" and IndieBand™ gets 4. So Bieber gets 720/724 of the $20.

The OP is saying in this case, Bieber should get $10 and IndieBand™ $10 (minus fees, etc).

Exactly. Per stream means that accounts that play music 24/7 are allocating orders of magnitude more revenue than yours or mine, much more even than what they paid in subscription fee. It's an open arbitrage incentive model, ripe for minimum risk exploitation by gray hats. Of course, this practice has the ability to erode actual artist revenue, which is already very low.

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