That is the way this onlooker understands it.
But, let's be very honest here. The system is grooved for the aggregators and distributors, in the grand tradition of show business. Individual artists and songwriters have very thin slices of a huge pie. When one sees an artist say that "I had a million streams and I didn't get a livable income from it," I ask, well, what livable income did you expect from radio play, the antecedent you knew. If people stop hearing your songs, who's going to buy your recordings?
Heck, look at all the anger when a good band recently gave away its music! It's hard to sell music. It's nearly impossible to sell unheard music. I can see where one says "I sold a lot of records in 1981 with this song, so for the convenience factor of hearing it now on your phone, that should cost money." On the other hand, um, someone else did the work and paid the costs to deliver the track to the phone.
Pre 1971 recordings in the US are not covered by federal copyright law and so the streaming services have been paying nothing to the record companies for those recordings. A recent court decision said California law did mean that streaming services should pay something for those tracks, but, obviously, that applies only to California. A variable payment system based on the assumed location of an ip address seems to me unworkable. The alternative of paying everyone regardless seems a poor business practice, and I guess one will see fewer streamed oldies. I mean, given a choice between spending the fraction of a penny streaming today's hotness versus The Crew Cuts singing Sh-Boom when the older generations are not engaging in streaming, how would you spend your money? (Disclosure, I am good friends with someone who is friends with one of the litigants and his family.)
Well, maybe the business is transforming, and maybe it makes sense for record companies to embrace being the source for the neo-radio stations. Lower per-item fee, more volume. That could work out. At least the streamers do pay unlike terrestrial radio. The streamers also provide quick links to allow for rapid purchase, which is really how artists always made serious money.
The artists were always up a creek without a paddle and their contractual canoe came with holes.