The Spotify paradox: why hundreds of fans can beat millions of streams

Joel Gouveia is a music supervisor, artist manager and booking agent, with a Substack. Earlier this year he wrote a series of posts, each more successful than the last, which drilled into the streaming music economy in a vivid and challenging way. He talked about bands with millions of streams that sold a dozen tickets, while others with comparatively tiny audiences could sell out tours. He looked some of the economic and cultural failings of music streaming and shone a bright light on them, basically – and those posts were the most popular pieces on the whole Substack network, showing just what a chord he struck. He joins Duncan Greive on The Fold from his office in Toronto to explain his thinking, and why he started speaking out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The Spotify paradox: why hundreds of fans can beat millions of streams is an episode from The Fold by The Spinoff.

This episode is 44:01 long.

This episode was published on Mar 23, 2026.

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