For those interested in understanding Spotify's point of view and why they act (or don't act, or minimally act) the way they do, I read something about the business that helped me to understand why they as a business behave:
Spotify as a music streaming platform, which was its legacy use case and business model, was wildly succesful and cool.
But as it grew, due to having to pay out performers/royalties, it's gross margins plateaud at 25% (again, artist royalties are variable costs that scale every time more people use the product (listen to music).
Branching out into podcasts helps the business grow because Spotify is building a dynamic audio ad marketplace. By doing this, Spotify’s gross margins can get up 40%
So you can see then why Spotify in 2022 cares more about JRE and Call Me Daddy and The Ringer and all these other properties more than a Neil Young catalog or other D-list streaming artists, when push comes to shove.
However, one thing that Spotify is going to have to thread the needle on is moderation, which when you are just streaming artists (25% gross margin), you don't have that headache. You have to take on this headache of moderation and how to do it, for the extra 15 points.
But then again, that's Showbiz Big Business baby!