OK, true Pandora pays the least, but Spotify is down there.

Spotify pays 0.3¢ per stream.

Tidal pays 1.3¢ per stream, 400% more

Qobuz is around 4¢ per stream, 300% more. Some regions can apparently go down to as little as 1¢ per stream, still much more.

Hell, apple music pays over double what Spotify does at 0.8¢

Yes it pay around what shitty US companies pay per stream, but the whole point of this point is that it is a bad standard. PLUS, these other services don’t have the “shit on small artists” policies like Spotify.

Let’s take a small artist that has 10k streams on Spotify and qobuz:

• on qobuz they earn more than 100 euros

• on Spotify they earn 0 euros

and anything above their minimum, does not earn the total, but the total - the minimum

A small artist that has 20k streams on the same two, and assume the Spotify stream minimum is 10k (IIRC it is a bit higher)

• on qobuz, they earn more than 200€

• on spotify, they earn about 30€

Plus this isn’t even addressing the making of shitty AI music and injecting it in playlists to steal even more revenue from artists.