That is a great point about loss-leading a future monopoly and of course a factor.
This isn't a hill I will die on by any means, but if you read Spotify's write up on royalties[0], they pay out based on stream share of the overall platform, on a monthly basis. E.g. If Columbia Records gets 10% of streams for a month, they get 10% of the pool of $ Spotify distributes. Now, like you said they likely have some shady practices - I would imagine Spotify has an incentive to create music like study and sleep beats themselves as those playlists get hit for 8 hrs at a time and it doesn't really matter who created the beat as long as it helps you study or sleep.
They do not indicate in [0] that podcasts are excluded from stream share. Even if they aren't included in stream share now, I'd imagine long term they very much intend for podcasts and music to be lumped into the same stream share model to drive payouts down.
This isn't a hill I will die on by any means, but if you read Spotify's write up on royalties[0], they pay out based on stream share of the overall platform, on a monthly basis. E.g. If Columbia Records gets 10% of streams for a month, they get 10% of the pool of $ Spotify distributes. Now, like you said they likely have some shady practices - I would imagine Spotify has an incentive to create music like study and sleep beats themselves as those playlists get hit for 8 hrs at a time and it doesn't really matter who created the beat as long as it helps you study or sleep.
They do not indicate in [0] that podcasts are excluded from stream share. Even if they aren't included in stream share now, I'd imagine long term they very much intend for podcasts and music to be lumped into the same stream share model to drive payouts down.
[0] https://artists.spotify.com/help/article/royalties