Perfect Competition

As of 2024, roughly 120,000 new tracks were uploaded to Spotify every single day. The platform's catalogue had crossed 120 million songs, a laptop, a microphone, a distributor charging $20 a year, and within 72 hours, an unknown name from anywhere on Earth could be sitting in the same library as Drake. Spotify does not pay artists per stream. Each month it pulls its subscription and advertising revenue, takes its cut, and divides about 70% of the rest among rights holders, in proportion to each track's share of every stream served that month. There is no posted price an artist can negotiate. In April 2024, Spotify added a further rule. A track needs at least 1000 plays in a 12 month window to be eligible for any payout at all. For an indie artist, this is brutal.