This is not really on point tho is it? TS has put out way more than a standard recording contract. So she'd be like a first round draft pick who is now a free agent with a couple of super bowl mvp's. Its not like anbody cares that peyton and eli manning had their famous dad as there high school coach during contract negotiations. On the merits, she gets alot of credits because she writes alot of her material as well. You can compare somebody like whitney houston (pop star) or even norah jones (jazz) who got their entire career or major break on other people's songs. That givers her dual/multi royalty streams right off the bat and more leverage practically speaking because the label is doing less work production etc (all this well beyong capital $$ loans and stuff).

Right, and the fact that she had the leverage to be able to do that in the first place makes her unlike the vast majority of artists on these services. So for her to play the "I'm not doing this for me, I'm doing this for all the undiscovered artists" card is a bit disingenuous. That's not how the industry works for the majority of artists -- their payouts from Spotify/Apple Music/etc. are so low they aren't focused on that as a revenue stream.

The only artists who really care about these streaming payments are already at the top of the food chain -- the vast majority of artists are just looking to get discovered. One could argue that the presence of big artists on these streaming services makes the platforms more valuable for artists at the bottom by drawing more users to them, but it definitely has created a situation where top artists' albums have value as a product themselves, while albums of lesser-known bands are essentially given away for free to try to build an audience.

To be fair, look at what people like Adele and the british independent labels were saying last week before she chimed in.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9756009

TS simply agreed with a previously articulated view. She didn't invent the argument.

(edit: They already pulled adele from the contract talks from what I gather, presumably because XL is indeed one of those small labels that breaks original talent, but doesn't have the superstar/financial status of the majors to just eat a full quarter of earnings/working capital. And given how spiky a hit based industry is it might be even worse if one of these companies had to launch a once in a lieftime hit record in this window, etc).