Spotify rents music that it itself rents from 3 companies that own most of the music. Why would those 3 companies not just raise their rents if Spotify starts making a decent profit?

Spotify has been around since 2006 and just eked out a tiny profit last year. Unless they plan on owning music themselves, I don’t see why the music owners wouldn’t try to capture most of the profit.

Or. Flip that over. What happens to the music owners if one of their primary distributors goes under?

As long as Apple, Google, and Amazon are willing to forgo margins on music, not much.