My logic is that despite me paying €10 for Spotify and deciding to use that to listen to just two artists, the majority of my money doesn’t go to those two artists at all. I don’t get to say what happens with my money, Spotify does this. So yes, the more a song gets listened, the more the artist gets payed, that’s kind of logical, and even ‘fair’, but can you not see how my system would be fair too, at least to some extent?
Of course, this is not sustainable as soon as someone (a lot of people) listen(s) to thousands of tracks each month. But that’s exactly my point as well; this is not a sustainable system.
Ok I think I get your point now, but I still think the number/size of artists is kind of irrelevant, as it's about the number of songs you listen to, right?
So let's say you and I are both paying $10 each a month. You don't listen much, and only rack up 30 song plays in total that month (to only two artists, to go with your example). Whereas I listen constantly (which in fairness isn't inaccurate), racking up 500 song plays. There's $20 of total revenue from us, and let's assume that $4 goes to the artists. As you only listened a bit, your artists only get $4 x 30/530 = $0.23, while the artists I was listening to constantly got the remaining $3.77. So even though we're paying the same amount for our subscription, the fact that I listen much more means that the artists I'm listening to get more money.
As I said though, that's entirely about the amount of listening, nothing to do with the size or status of the artists. And it's the nature of subscription services, for any type of service. With all that listening I did, it was probably 20 different artists (again, probably quite accurate, particularly when I'm doing roulettes which is when I do the most Spotify listening) in which case each artist is going to make a similar amount to the two artists you listened to.
I would argue that we do have a say over where our money goes. If there are only a handful of artists we want to listen to, and we can't listen to music very often, then maybe subscription services aren't the right way to spend our money and we're better off spending on buying albums by those bands. Personally, I do both. I listen to Spotify an absolute ton, but I also buy albums that I really love as well.