Surprised to see most of the comments here defending this practice. It's more Enshittification and it's only going to get worse. They've already stopped paying artists who get under 1000 streams (per track per year I think) and they offer 'marketing' opportunities for artists where they'll show your track more but pay you a cut rate. They also changed some terms recently (I can no longer find the article) to make clear that curated playlists can include tracks that have paid to be there.

All of these things suck for artists but they also suck for consumers. The product is slowly getting worse but at a rate where nobody notices until there will be little quality left.

I also find it staggering how little empathy my fellow software developers have for artists. If AI does eventually decimate the number of software dev jobs I'm sure you'll be as pragmatic as you expect others to be.