The artists that get a lot of plays on streaming and don't see much money most likely have a bad deal with their record label. Many if not most certainly do, and that's not Spotify's fault nor streaming services in general. The system is a mess. But realistically, most of the artists complaining about streaming weren't making much money beforehand either and seem to want to conveniently ignore the fact that most artists have never made much money on recorded music, even the more successful ones. Live revenue and merch is where most artists have traditionally made their money, and it'll continue to need to be the case for a lot of acts as the recorded music industry continues to struggle.
Promotion budgets have a lot less to do with what makes or breaks an act than any of us would like to believe. It's easier that way, because it keeps us from accepting that some music is just more accessible to a large audience than other music. Now, I'm not saying budgets and marketing wizards don't help at all, but they're not going to make a non-hit a hit, and if something is truly worthy of being called a hit, it tends to force itself to the surface. The problem is, there just really aren't nearly as many hits out there as some of us would like to think.
