SamuraiBeandog

The standard payment to an artist on Spotify is "$0.003 to $0.005 per stream": https://simplebeen.com/artists-make-on-spotify/

That is basically nothing for any artist that isn't in the top tier of mainstream success.

prior to Spotify coming along the industry was in decline as downloading MP3’s on torrents and file sharing programs was the norm

You're essentially pirating music by using Spotify, you are not paying the artists that you listen to in any meaningful way.

I’m still getting a ridiculous amount of value from Spotify

If only the same could be said for the artists you're listening to...

That seems extremely high, can you explain your listening habits? Are you listening to all of those albums start to finish? Are you selecting each of those albums or just letting the algorithm run wild?

but the system was still rigged from the start

And this, intentionally or not, is the real message. There's no such thing as a real meritocracy, the system is always rigged in favor of the people who created it.

but the common thread seems to be that absolute power corrupts absolutely

This is not at all the intended message of Atlas Shrugs.

I will not be taking questions on how I recognise the extreme agedness of your terminology.

"Lamers"?!? What are you, like 90 years old?

Microsoft are charging a yearly fee to continue getting security updates for Win10 after EOL.

Bloober Team is the studio that did the Silent Hill 2 remake.

Kobe's nickname (self assigned) was the Black Mamba. Mamba Mentality was the book he wrote about his mindset. MJ was famously competitive but Kobe kind of took it to another level that bordered on sociopathic.

It's not the same game at all. A single purpose piece of code does not have the same considerations as a large software application. It's more like one is speed chess and the other is actual armies on a battlefield.

Clickbait title. This is in the context of competitive coding, which is a very specific and constrained programming exercise with a time limit. Which is not at all comparable to real world software development.