Everything should be going well for the tech giant that has narrowed the music market to its own catalog, however, Spotify’s exemplary leadership has some cracks that executives want to close.
since The company was founded back in 2006the Swedish technology company has seen an unstoppable rise; Its new proposal came at a time when the ship of the music business was rocking in the face of the tsunami of piracy and the emerging global digitalization, which is why its model, despite the first reluctance of the old players in the market, quickly impressed executives and suits who saw in the new company’s proposal a new way of doing business.
It has been raining a lot since 2006 and since then as well 2013, when it cemented itself as the world’s leading streaming platform; However, it was not all a path through the vines that reaped the rewards of success and money.But the company led by Daniel Ek had to face dozens of controversies, sabotage attempts and criticism from many musicians.
Since they were able to establish the freemium model, Artists have been constantly criticizing the company for the small economic return they receive from their work.. While physical records allowed them to earn a realistic income from the sale of each CD, the pay-per-listen on Spotify is ridiculous, laughable; Exact numbers are not public and vary widely depending on the country and the agreement signed between the artist, distributor, company and platform, however About a hundredth.
Spotify’s business formula is volume; The more you listen, the higher the user retention rate on the platform and the greater the profitability; Spotify is just another technology company, not a cultural company. The company is interested in artists getting millions of views even though many of them may not be legitimate.
American rapper RBX, cousin of the famous singer Snoop Dogg, A lawsuit was filed in California court against the company for allowing fraudulent copies in fellow rapper Drake’s catalog for three years.reads the accusatory text.
According to the document, the company would have allowed this “Billions” of illegal eavesdropping They would have boosted Drake’s catalog, though he doesn’t exactly point to the rapper as the culprit, but only as a beneficiary.
The lawsuit talks about individual traffic movements, like the one it produces A strange network of VPNs that tried to hide eavesdropping from Middle Eastern countries as if they were from British agentsOr that thousands of accounts played their songs for more than twenty hours a day, which is clearly impossible.
In this case, the accusation does not directly point to Spotify as the promoter of these suspicious activities that violate its usage policies, but rather emphasizes that The company would have allowed them to benefit from understanding volume as the key metric for their business.
The text confirms Millions of dollars that other artists would have lost due to the distribution of royalties to Drake and are seeking compensation from a poorly defined list of injured parties.; Additionally, it highlights Spotify’s supposed algorithm responsible for combating bots and fraudulent copying – the complainant is not talking about an accidental error, but rather about permission -.
The Canadian rapper said nothing about it, but public opinion in the US spoke of Spotify as more of a wallet-related issue than this one: Everything seems to indicate that the company will raise the price of its subscriptions again.
According to several reports from Insiders From the industry cited by Billboard, LThe company had prepared a new increase in its stake in the United States at the beginning of 2026 In Spain, this increase actually occurred in the middle of the previous year. However, the company is dominant in the American market Small profit margin This will cause you to adjust your prices upward to color the score sheet.
While this is happening in the USA, the company continues to expand around the world with some setbacks in the so-called Global South: according to the technology analyst Mark Mulligan In its specialized medium, Media Research, the company grows in these markets without receiving greater profits. Interpretation? Simple: In advertising, An audience in North America or Europe is not as valuable as an audience in developing countries.Therefore, advertising prices in those markets decrease. In addition, the subscription fees must be adjusted to match the prices of these countries, therefore The number of users is increasing in these markets that have not yet been colonized by the Swedish technology company, without any profit percentage at the end of the year. In fact, Spotify broke a new user record in 2025.
We must add to this that despite the great distance, Spotify is starting to see some serious, competent alternatives to its service in its rearview mirror Like Apple Music and, more importantly, YouTube Music. The latter, owned by the Google network and sister to the very popular video streaming platform, has begun to grow thanks to its stagnant prices and shared subscription With YouTube Premium; In this sense, YouTube offers a free music streaming option with which Spotify will have a very difficult time competing in the countries of the Global South where it must expand – in Europe and the US there are not many markets to conquer; Music streaming services should look to those countries for new customers.
For now, it remains a distinct dominance for a company that has redefined music releases and the industry, however, the path to continued world domination may be murkier than you’d like.