Five Proposals to Overhaul Spotify's Artist Economy

Joel Gouveia proposes five structural changes to Spotify, arguing the platform's design flaws harm artists despite industry growth. Music revenues rose 6.4% last year, with 837 million paid subscribers, yet artist dissatisfaction persists. Gouveia's first idea: require human-identity verification (KYC) for uploads to block AI-generated tracks—60,000 daily AI tracks flood the system, with 85% of AI streams fraudulent per Deezer. Second: replace pro-rata royalties with user-centric payments, where a listener's $11.99 goes only to artists they stream. A 2021 CNM study found this would cut top-10 artist payouts by 12.5% on Spotify; SoundCloud's five-year implementation shows 1 in 5 indie artists could double income. Third: let artists gate exclusive content behind paid subscriptions, akin to Substack. Fourth: use listening data to create community rooms—group chats for top fans, plus badges and achievements on profiles. Fifth: charge $1 per track upload to deter spam farms, making 10,000 monthly uploads cost $120,000 annually. Gouveia praises Spotify's algorithm and free tier but insists the platform must prioritize artist-fan relationships over shareholder optimization.