It’s not viable for journalism bc music artists have other avenues of revenue like touring and merch.

The point is that even Taylor Swift doesn’t make very much money from Spotify. What other sources of revenue does journalism have? It’s not like the NYT is going to make a few million going on tour.

Spotify has a lot of revenues with millions of users at $10 - $20 per month. Perhaps they give very little to artists but I’m not sure it is necessary to operate. If artists had no other ways to make money, I suspect they would pay more as otherwise the system wouldn’t work.

I agree. I spend far more that I used to because of the option to listen to anything I want.