The difference is that your streaming actually has an impact on payouts. If you listen to 10 hours of an obscure genre with small and up and coming artists, they will currently micropennies, since your streams are dwarfed by the kid that listened to 150hrs of Taylor Swift a month.

It’s stacked against indie artists, towards large artists that get the vast majority of plays (and who probably have record deals ensuring that the labels get their blood)