This is completely unacceptable. I'm paying nothing and I want more from the service or else I'm taking my freeloading ass elsewhere! If all you other cheap bastards join me, collectively we'll show these corporate bigwigs and they'll be on their knees for our unpaid usage to return.
So if I understand your position correctly, you feel entitled to free content because the artists already have what you have determined to be enough money?
What a way to misrepresent my argument, holy moly.
I don't feel entitled to anything, never said so in any way whatsoever. You are only claiming that because you argue in bad faith.
Let me spell it out for you: artists who need money don't make a living out of Spotify. They make pennies on the dollar. They make money from patreon, merch, deals or if they are famous enough, concerts.
People who do make enough money to (in theory) make a living from Spotify are millionares already.
If you think millonares need more money you are delusional.
Again, if I reformat your argument, what you are saying is that it is better to not pay musicians at all through services like Spotify or YouTube Music and continue to steal their content, regardless of how famous or rich they are. Unless I have missed something, that is the essence of what you are saying.
It's ironic that you're suggesting I'm arguing in bad faith while it's you that is endorsing theft and piracy. My only goal here is to help you identify your hypocrisy and sense of entitlement; I am taking your words and you are getting upset because you don't like the way it sounds.
Holy fucking shit, maybe if you stopped being so fucking pretentious, you would stop completely deluding what I am saying.
I never endorsed "theft" and "piracy." The fact that you use these terms together, as if they were in any way connected speaks volumes about your knowledge about this topic.
Let me recapitulate my argument as if I was talking a 2 year old.
Spotify doesn't pay enough to small artists who need money. These small artists make a pittance from digital sales on Spotify. Instead, they have other means of making a living.
Artists who do make enough money to THEORETICALLY make a living (to live in a house, with utilities paid and enough money for food and other essentials) are MILLIONARES.
If you think millionaires need more of your cash, go off buddy, please give them all of your cash for all I care.
I never said I am entitled to anything, even less free music. That was never my argument, in any way, shape, or form. You simply made a strawman of me saying this bullshit because you find it uncomfortable to believe that perhaps, just maybe, Spotify does not give shit about anything else but profit.
Sorry, I didn't mean to make you upset. If we're in the business of putting words in each other's mouths, then I think we're both doing a terrific job of that. I have never suggested that millionaires need more of my cash, much less have I suggested that corporations aren't driven by profit. Both of these things can be true, while I can also—to the original context of this thread—acknowledge that loss-generating users are not in the position to demand more.
I'm not sure why you keep bringing sources of revenue into this conversation. If you want to pick a fight, it shouldn't be with me or even with streaming services, but instead with the music industry as a whole where producers take the majority share of profits. My only point has been that your choice as a consumer is either finding an alternative that does better, accepting the changes in the terms of service or discontinuing use altogether. It seems that we can agree that the collective sentiment here on Lemmy to instead pirate content and effectively steal from content creators is not acceptable.
I think the artists are paid better and fairly in other platforms like bandcamp or by concerts. The amount they get paid in Spotify is so low, regardless of whether their listeners have the premium subscription or not.