[crimbles]

The one simple trick to avoid here is to not be "an artist". Unless you make it big the only thing you're getting out of Spotify and Apple is possibly the easy of distributing a link to your music.

I know a minor band with a few 10's of thousands of Spotify plays and they make 10x more money out of Bandcamp and gigs than they do out of streaming services. And they can't live off that so have day jobs anyway.