I hope musicians can pay bills with likes, since ponying up €10.99 is a huge ask.
PS: not that many musicians are able to pay bills with their spotify checks, but that's not the point.
What IS the point, though? You seem to be criticising people who don't purchase a Spotify Premium while also admitting Spotify barely pays them anything. Yes, this client gives nothing to the artist, Spotify gives next to nothing, both are bad in different ways.
If anyone genuinely wants to support musicians - buy their merch, go to their concerts, buy their albums on Bandcamp or physical media. No streaming platform pays them their dues.
Pirating doesn't support the artists, but it's also not weakening their expected rights for future business contracts, which supporting services like Spotify does; after all, if all these other artists are getting paid 'x' much, and all these consumers think this is what it's worth, how is anyone but Beyonce or Swift or Kanye gonna have any hope of arguing against that?
There is no way to inform Spotify that you don't endorse their business practices, except to not subscribe. Subscribing is an endorsement.
Personally, I purchase my music individually on iTunes (and download and convert to mp3). Apple still takes a cut, but it's much lower than the near-100% cut that streaming services take.
All the main music services operate on the 70/30 split in favour of the license holders.
If you pay $10 for a subscription, $7 gets put into a pool with all the subscription and ad revenue for your country, and that gets divided out proportionally based on the playback in your country. If Taylor Swift gets 10% of the plays in the US, she gets 10% of the pot.
If you're of the opinion that pirating artists' music is better for them in the long run, that's cool. But at least be informed on what the business model you're complaining about actually entails.
I guess that would depend on how much music you listen to. If you listen very occasionally, then yeah €10.99 for unlimited streaming isn't worth it. In that case, you can just buy songs individually.
If the price for individual songs is also a "big ask" for you, then you simply don't think music is worth paying for.
This isn't a "pay what you want" model where someone creates a product and asks you to pay whatever you feel is appropriate, they're creating a product and setting an explicit price for it.