Spotify is taking in a lot of money and paying 70% to labels, which adds up to a lot of money for artists depending on their agreement with their label/distributor. But the per stream rate is still very low because there are trillions of songs streamed annually.
Are you saying that CD Baby is a better distribution technique than standard labels because you get good margins? I didn't know CD Baby until I just looked them up but they appear to be a distributor, so your $3.65 metric is still being paid by Spotify/Amazon/Apple. Please correct me if I'm wrong but that is much higher than the normal published numbers by 10-100x.
Is this an RIAA moment where labels are trying to make other people look like jerks rather than accepting what they do, or are people using the "per 1000 streams" poorly because they will always look worse on successful platforms?
In fact Jefftk has stated the exact opposite to your position.
$3.65 per thousand is at the low end of what I see elsewhere. For example https://twostorymelody.com/spotify-pay-per-stream/ has $3-$5 per thousand.
> I'm not clear what your point is.
I think the distribution of streaming revenues is generally reasonably fair, and people who say things like "Spotify pays artists nothing" are confused about either (a) how much money there is to divide up or (b) where it is going.
I'm glad that there is someone creative on here that can educate and confirm.
Spotify take in €9.5 billion and pay out 70% of that as fees to record companies who take their slice before giving the artist nothing.
I would consider that a lot of money, even if you disagree.