From what I understand that 70% they're paying artists is from "profit."

And from another comment in this thread:

Their last quarterly financial statements shows $65 million profit on $3.36 billion in revenue.

And then you have stuff like this:

https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/20/spotify-to-spend-1b-buying-its-own-stock/

So lets assume they make $65 million in profit every quarter between when that article came out and April 21 2026 (the period the article states they were doing buybacks). I count 18 quarters in that period. So if my math is correct that is $1.17 billion in "profit" in the same period of time they plan to do $1 billion in stock buybacks. But artists are only getting 70% of said profits. So that's about $819 million to artists in the same period of time Spotify is doing $1 billion in stock buybacks.

So we have a mega corporation playing creative accounting and doing stock buybacks instead of paying artists more. Classic.