Because Spotify, and the music industry in general relies heavily on "pyramid-based meritocracy", and because a lot of success is gamed by black hats, A lot of

Because Spotify, and the music industry in general relies heavily on "pyramid-based meritocracy", and because a lot of success is gamed by black hats, A lot of artists on the platform resort to paying for services and advertising, which also must be considered in comparison to profit. A lot of artists need to emulate success and fandom in order to break into paid work, and that creates a toxic situation where they need to pay up front (for various other things like SEO, interviews, artificial promotion, awards, and even for spots in gigs to get to a success point) before any real success is achieved, or they need to spend many years in unpaid (and very defeating) obscurity before finding out whether they succeed or not. Statistics really don't apply to everyone on a consistent basis, and a lot of numbers in the mix are totally calculated in "mysterious ways" on purpose. I focus on licensing rather than streams, that way there is more of a (tangible) contractual negotiation involved.