Spotify takes the fees from all paying listeners, and then distributes the whole lump among the artists by popularity.

This means that most of the money from a paying listener goes to whatever is most popular on Spotify as a whole. You as a listener may only be listening to a bunch of obscure indy bands that touch your heart, but your 10 bucks a month will not be split among those indy bands that are the reason you are on Spotify. Those ten bucks go to whoever everyone else is listening to, which is mostly middle-of-the-road pop.

This is extremely unfair. Spotify's main selling point is diversity; the tremendous choice and ease of discovery is what makes Spotify Spotify. Diverse musicians bring diverse music to Spotify; then Spotify turns around and gives most of their contributions to the middle of the road.

This is also economically unsound. Markets work well because I get to chose who I give my business to. If I want pears, I pay for pears, and more people will grow them. Why should I pay for the people who grow strawberries if what I want is pears? If people enjoy growing pears so much they will do it for free, should I not be able to reward them regardless? Would they not be able to create more and better pears if I were permitted chose that my money goes to them?

This is also culturally problematic. Mainstream artists are predominantly white and straight. Spotify is taking money paid by fans of black artists and gay artists who attract those fans by sharing their unique and sometimes heartbreaking perspective, and giving the money to rich white people. The same is true for every other musician that is really unique in some way.

Spotify is wasting the Internet's opportunity to reward diversity, and fix what has been broken with music for long, the terrible, terrible dominance of the middle of the road.

Spotify, stop further entrenching middle-of-the-road pop music! Start rewarding diversity! Pay listener fees to the artists that listeners listen to!