To ask the obvious question — many musicians argue that Spotify has been terrible for artists [0]. Let’s say you grow as big as Spotify. Will you be terrible for devs?
Obviously, Microsoft are probably loss-leading with Game Pass, but still, not every all-you-cant-eat subscription service is bad to their vendors.
Game Pass has the huge advantage of being about games, it can retain a much lower game library number (~100 titles) but still keep people subscribed by rotating the games around first party titles. This means that until the landscape changes (Nvidia's attempt being squandered nullifies a lot of potential here of a landscape changing), being an invited third party means good income, due to the revenue being split ~100 ways rather than ~11 million ways.
Of course the above is a simplification, as each game gets its own separate contract agreement and the payout isn't based on how many times a game is played.
Unless you transparently publish your financials, there is no way to be held accountable to this system.
Also there's the secondary problem that Spotify has an incentive to produce easy-to-digest content in house for which it pays lower (or no) royalties [0].
For you, the equivalent of problem #2 is your incentive to make deliberately addictive content of no artistic merit. Easy to say you won't do this, a lot harder when your backers demand growth and your analytics team demonstrates that Angry Birds For Tots will maximize engagement.
Don't get me wrong, I think you have a cool idea and I hope it works, but everything you say about your commitment to devs is cheap talk, and in my experience, such ideals tend to get discarded during, e.g., difficult funding rounds.
good luck!
[0] https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-fake-artists-problem-is-...
Forgive me if I'm missing something, however I don't understand what exactly is wrong with this. Isn't this the case with any "art-type" career?
Are there any services that pay a flat-rate per stream?
Isn't this the same as saying players will pay at least as much as they are in existing markets?
Spotify's merchandise stores and concert notifications are IMO a pitiful shadow of what they can and should be, and what you can and should be - imagine a Patreon-esque system with tiered badges and in-game supporter perks, with verification built in at your DRM layer, the Discord tiered-role features that Patreon integrates with, award-gifting, etc. Draw a hard line at what kinds of monetization is and isn't acceptable, and become a breath of fresh air in the monetization debate. There's so much possible here beyond subscription distributions, and you could cement your reputation as an innovator and ally to a whole world of brilliant creators.