The "kickstarter culture" move is usually always a bad idea for running and growing a business, companies that go the route of being subscriber funded eventually fail in highly competitive markets.
SoundCloud is doing the same thing and that is why they've lost most of their relevance to creators.
The future is in platforms that find ways to not tax and undervalue their creators, that's what the best creators will move to.
> It's pretty crazy that musicians that publish music to Spotify are asked to pay for subscriptions to the service and promotion on the platform. It's like spending $20 to earn $4.
YouTube keeps 45% of the advertising revenue according to [1]. So creators keep a narrow majority of the revenue, which doesn't feel wholly unfair since YouTube is paying all the costs. Doing the math on a billion hours of viewed video per day at an average 11.7 minute video and $28B in revenue gives me an average revenue per view of $0.015 for YouTube.
I also think you're over-valuing creators a little bit. YouTube needs creators, but the creators are largely replaceable. Creators need somewhere to host their videos, and there's pretty much only YouTube. I don't think I've ever seen a creator successfully get off YouTube without switching to another format entirely. Meanwhile I've seen lots of creators rise, fall, and get replaced by someone else.
Spotify is basically the same way. Musicians don't like it, but people don't buy music anymore, so you either put up with the streaming services or you go do something else for a living. Spotify will likely be fine if you leave, but you won't be fine if Spotify cuts you off.
1. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-money-youtube-creat...
Not accurate at all. This is a very destructive attitude to hold on to.
Creators create the content that makes platforms worth while. They ARE the main product that platforms rely upon. Popular platforms make billions of dollars on advertising integration, but the average creator makes pennies. The balance is dramatically skewed.
The platforms make profit from sponsors that they don't share with creators after paying overhead... This is a problem, especially when employees and investors get overpaid (relatively to creators) for their contributions to a platform's success.
It's pretty crazy that musicians that publish music to Spotify are asked to pay for subscriptions to the service and promotion on the platform. It's like spending $20 to earn $4.
These platforms know it too, but they hire marketing companies and influencers to promote false hope to creators. It's exactly the reason why ponzi schemes are so rampant everywhere online.