Where was I when this happened?

So… I just started looking into if it’s possible to put a track or two on spotify since I have an artist page there. I came upon two articles on the subject

This article from 2018 says Spotify was in beta to let artists upload their own music and pay out at a 50% rate (apparently comparable to the deal the labels get)

Article

This article from 2019 says Spotify was rolling that up and wanted to “focus on… (yada yada)”. Wouldn’t I like to know the reason behind them bailing on the idea.

Article

Just for those who don’t know, you have to pay a middleman to give them a digital file and they in turn, give that file to Spotify. And this is necessary because?