I've had a song stuck in my head all day. I went on to Spotify (for which I pay and rightly so) to find it only to find that it wasn't there (it was before). After a bit of research I found that the artist (and a load of others) had pulled the album from Spotify.
[Fun fact: I now won't pay for that song, as I have no interest in running two music streaming services.]
It seems that artists are getting annoyed with not being paid fairly for their work and are making a stand. After a bit more looking around, it seems labels are taking an unfair portion of artists' money.
So my question is this:
In the age of the internet - a platform in which you can be exposed to millions at once, why do record labels still exist?
For bonus points (because I'm curious):
1) Are labels etc. really that greedy or are artists making a fuss?
2) Why do they hate spotify so much? From what I can see, Spotify seems to have paid considerable amounts of money out to artists compared to some other mediums, such as YouTube or Radio.