But what, exactly, does Spotify bring to the table that justifies more than a couple of percent operating fee? They don't own the content; they're just middlem

But what, exactly, does Spotify bring to the table that justifies more than a couple of percent operating fee? They don't own the content; they're just middlemen. The labels / rights holders can continually raise their prices to just below (or perhaps above, if VCs want to subsidize forever) Spotify's income. Spotify's app works at best ok (I'm on android). But even a good app plus recommendations probably gets you amazon-sized margins.