Unless Spotify obtains copyright for all the popular music in the world people want to listen to, or media or whatever, I do not see how this is a possibility.
Currently, Spotify has to buy from the 3 big music publishers (which limits the amount of expenses it can reduce), and it sells to people who have the option from buying from at least 4 streaming services which are relatively trivial to switch to (which limits the amount of revenue they can earn). The exact opposite of the situation you want your business to be in.
Sure, not all songs are available everywhere, but there is at least some coverage. Apple Music seems to have pretty widespread coverage too (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204411) but I could find at least a few places I visited recently where it wasn't available while Spotify was (Bangladesh and Haiti are two examples)
In any case, looks like Tidal has never earned a profit, but was bought by Block for $300M a couple years ago for unknown reasons. I cannot imagine that worked out for Block shareholders.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/03/08/square-just-bought...
> At best, analysts estimate the company has 5% of the music streaming market
> it has lost money every year since it started
Also, Amazon didn’t go 17 years without profit. Is there any company that went that long and then went profitable?
I like Spotify, but do they even have a roadmap to profitability? Are they even projecting profitability any number of years out?
It's a fucked up system, but it seems most companies go through this.