Peter Frampton: 55 million streams and I got paid $1700

Devils advocate - if the musicians don't like what they're being paid, they can use an alternate service.

It does seem a fairly competitive market to me. You have Apple Music, Youtube, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora etc. Unless those companies are all conspiring against artists/consumers.

Unfortunately network egress does cost money, but consumers are not used to not paying per stream - although perhaps you can make up for it on advertising revenue.

They all pay sheet. Some pay slightly more or less sheet depending on the platform but they all pay sheet at the end of the day.