Spotify often gets bashed by top creators. The service pays just $0.00397 per stream, but with 108 million users listening to an average of 25 hours per month, those streams can add up for creators who can get the listener’s attention.
Spotify verifies artists who then get additional benefits on the platform. Some artists find success the traditional route, some optimize their work for the system, others work the system…and some really work it.
Relevance to other network/aggregation platforms: tiny payments add up, and given a platform, creators will find a way to get and maximize value from it. The critical component is customers.