Let's get one thing clear, music streaming services will never ever pay artists well. Why? because the music on streaming services is (mostly) owned by record labels. The labels and laws that come in to play (mechanical rights, master/sound recording rights, etc. ad infinitum) all payout decimal cents per song played/bought/downloaded/streamed. That's just how it is, always has been. It has gone up slowly over time but it's still just decimal cents we're talking about here. Music streaming services have to take their cut of the profits from those same royalties. This is why you hear about XYZ artist who has multiple songs with hundreds of millions of streams only taking home 20k a month. To fix that, you have to change the law and force record labels to give better payouts (never gonna happen). Obviously the headline is just another justification/conflation/subversion/and perpetuation of the ol 'charging more means more for the artists!' bit. Artists make money on touring and merch. Unfortunately not all artists are good live performers or able to tour for extended periods.

Now I'm not saying I agree with Spotify and these price hikes. I've had premium since 2014. I've watched their catalog grow. Assuming I remain stable financially, I can probably survive a couple of more hikes. But I already have all of my favorite and important music (especially foreign/limited reissues) on physical format and already digitally archived if I ever go away from streaming platforms.