I'd wager the income from playing gigs would be substantially lower if you weren't on Spotify.
1. They saw our sticker/poster and thought the name is interesting
2. They checked the venue/festival-site and thought it sounded interesting
3. They knew us from social media
Exactly zero times I had someone tell me the found us on spotify and came because of that. Of course that doesn't mean no such people exist, my sample size might be too small. There might also be people who find us on spotify and then buy on bandcamp, no way to check on that.
But my feeling right now is that our more traditional boots on the ground marketing does a lot more than the online stuff. That doesn't mean that dynamic can be totally different for other bands or other genres tho.
People don't go to indie concerts because of a spotify track. Nor to big name concerts. And 20 cents corresponds to around 50 to 100 plays according to the numbers mentioned here.
Spotify can't give you these experiences no matter how hard they try so this claim doesn't make much sense to me. A concert isn't exactly competing with streaming services or anything.
Do you have numbers behind this claim?
I definitely got aware of some unknown artists thanks to Spotify and YouTube, some of them had low hundreds views/listens.
Ended up supporting them, going to concerts and buying merch.
Unfortunately more like 5000+ plays. People tend go to concerts of music they listen to and for a lot of people that means hearing it on Spotify
While it does, note that paying or doing stuff free "for exposure" is exactly how many artists got big and huge hits were made, from payola to DJs (starting way earlier than Alan Freed with radio DJs, and going all the way to EDM DJs being paid to break a track), all the way to paying for artist ads or record shop placement, buying fake streams, followers, and views to appear more popular and drive exposure, or doing for free (or, often, paying for) the support spot on a bigger band's concert.
Anecdotically I've attended multiple gigs for artists I discovered via Spotify.
Next?
> People don't go to indie concerts because of a spotify track.
Yes they do.
The first requires committing time and effort to get 50 people to see you, 20 of which are your personal friends. The second is making the music you have already produced available to millions of people around the world, with virtually no effort.
Surely Spotify should improve on compensating artists, but all-in-all it is still a better deal for the artist than the "for exposure" gig at the local bar.