Spotify's missing money-maker is artist-to-fan messaging

This decision-making around how to price digitally scarce music and art illuminated to me that in a commodified streaming economy, most musicians don’t have the ability to set the price of their own creative output in the first place, and may be leaving money on the table in the process.

As an example, Spotify doesn’t make decisions based on what is best for the livelihood and basic needs of musicians. It makes decisions based on which is best for their investors. This is demonstrated when Spotify, in their publicly available investor relations reporting, labels artist payouts as “cost of revenue”.