In the same way, there was a fixed pot of money available split up by popularity, so making thousands of songs and streaming them as much as possible with bot accounts is profitable, even though each bot account cost a few dollars per month.
Here, the bots you use to juice your numbers don’t even need a subscription fee!
That would eliminate direct financial payment from botting. But botting could still affect trending or “related” recommendations for indirect financial boost.
In one case, 10 plays brought in $10 of revenue to Spotify, and those 10 plays should get $PERCENT of that $10.
In the other case, 1000 plays brought in $10 of revenue to Spotify, and those 1000 plays should also get the same $PERCENT of that $10.
The real mystery is why it should work any differently, because the cross subsidy seemingly creates a perverse profit incentive for bots to scalp off some of that cross subsidy. The economics are broken. This is socialism for the rich and popular.
Also, since they didn't change the economics, they have done nothing to prevent this from happening again. Any economist that sees that he can earn $12 from a $11 payment would keep doing this until the risk adjusted return is equal to the interest rate. Ironically this will remain profitable until the cross subsidy is gone. I.e. there is an incentive to use the bots to boost real musicians who lose out from not being the recipient of the cross subsidy.