Saying that Spotify is "producer-friendly" must be couched in the context of the times. 100% of $0 is still $0, and at the time most people were just pirating music so you weren't making anything off of recordings. If Spotify wanted to give you literally fractions of a cent instead of $0, you were going to take that. I wouldn't say it was ever really friendly to producers...mostly to consumers and, in order to be friendly to consumers, they had to win over record labels. And I think Spotify made a _lot_ of compromises in order to do that, including taking money that should really be going to producers and paying off the RIAA/labels so they continue to put their catalogs on there.
Source: I was a producer when Spotify started and I still am.
> get peanuts from spotify even for non-trivial number of streams.
Define "non-trivial". Easily 80-90% of all plays are by a handful of artists, the absolute vast majority of whom are owned by labels.
Even if your non-trivial amount of listenings is in the tens of millions, it pales in comparison to Drake or Ed Sheeran.
> until spotify pays from MY subscription the artists I listen to
Your subscription is 15 dollars a month. Yup. That is definitely not peanuts when spread over all the stuff you listen to.
Edit: you could be one of the few people who listen to the same band all the time, but that's not representative of people's listening habits.
Edit2:
> there are countless musicians who own the copyright to their own stuff
80-90% of all world music is owned by four companies [1]. This amounts to about ~99% of music people listen to. The "countless musicians" make up a long tail that is barely a blip on the radar.
You seem to be about a decade out of date, per your wikipedia link. It states ~72% of music (down from ~88% in 2012) is owned by the big three (not four, after EMI was eaten by Sony in late 2011). Best of all, parent may have the right idea buying from Bandcamp. From your link:
> These companies account for more than half of US market share. However, this has fallen somewhat in recent years, as the new digital environment allows smaller labels to compete more effectively
Which to me at least suggests that seperating hardware like CDs and LPs from the actual music is helping artists. Perhaps that should be taken with a grain of salt, though: I'm still optimistic and naive enough to think things may improve for artists.
> It states ~72% of music (down from ~88% in 2012) is owned by the big three (not four, after EMI was eaten by Sony in late 2011).
It's hard to keep specifying the exact composition of the music scene, and the market share by the Big Four then Three then Four then Three again is fluctuating between 70 and 90 percent from year to year.
> I'm still optimistic and naive enough to think things may improve for artists.
The Big Ones have the industry in chokehold. Bandcamp is fine, but if you want to listen to something other than indies, you're stuck with the catalogs owned by the Big Ones. For example, https://www.sonymusicpub.com/en/songwriters Anything from Betales to AC/DC and from Enio Morricone to Dolly Parton is owned by Sony.
So you want to start a service and provide a service that provides both indies and this music? You will bow to industry's terms. If you have enough money and clout like Apple, you'll be able to negotiate better terms. Until then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Source: I was a producer when Spotify started and I still am.