How spotify manipulates both its user as well as artists for more profit (a thread):

Spotify displays the monthly listeners of every single artist in their profile and ranks them based in it, for example justin bieber is at #2 right now with 76M monthly listeners

Lets be honest unless ur a part of stan twitter, u will think that justin bieber is the most popular artist right now, but that is where they trick you. Justin bieber is not even in top 10 most streamed artists of this year and not in top 5 most streamed artists of this month

So wats happening here? How he has 76M listeners then? Most of these listeners are passively listening to him from playlists, which means they play a playlist in general and one of those songs turn out to be a justin beiber song...

...so now though this person didnt intentionally listen to Justin bieber, he/ she is counted as a monthly listener for justin. So these monthly listeners are just a reflection of most playlisted artists right now not the most popular ones.