Spotify chill-hop/"music to study to" playlists are popular and people listen to them repeatedly and for long stretches of time which makes them lucrative for streaming revenue.
I know someone who runs a chill-hop "record label". Their most popular songs get on big spotify chill-hop playlists and have ~10 million spotify streams. This equates to around $50-70k USD. Most of their releases have a fraction of this but it is worth it for the odd hit.
My guess is they give artists exposure in exchange for a share of the profits through their channels. I don't know if they can monetize the free stream on YouTube, but they also stream on payable streaming services and sell albums on Bandcamp.
Does anyone know the business model? I'm getting adds for this one on instagram.