Labels own the copyright to the recordings that Spotify is streaming.

And yet they are not artists.

And is it Spotify’s fault that some artists use labels? Spotify does allow artists to self publish and not use labels.

Your argument was built upon the premise that Spotify pays 70% to artists. You were show to be wrong and now appear to be trying to move the goalposts.

It pays artists that don’t use labels 70%. Saying Spotify doesn’t pay artists is rooted in ignorance because most major artists use labels and don’t own the rights to the recordings.

The amount of artists who aren’t on Labels and will still get paid under Spotify’s new rules is surprisingly small. It appears to be possibly be under 30%. So I do find it disingenuous to pretend like these artists are making a living off of Spotify royalties.

Here is example of how much labels music are in the big playlists several years ago. I can’t find anything from last year though. But we do know that payments are about to get a lot worse for smaller artists.

https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2022/05/major-labels-control...

There are plenty of unsigned artists being paid directly by spotify. It makes no sense to complain that spotify is paying labels when the artists are the ones that signed up for that deal.

And artist could choose not to use labels, if they figured they would make more money that way.

So the critique should be aimed at labels, not Spotify.