No, they spun it that way by deceptively going on a rant about how many “songs get fewer than 1000 plays ever” and doing the math based on that in the “article,” but that’s not what the change actually was. If you read the details of the change below that, it is that they will no longer pay out at all for songs that get fewer than 1000 unique listeners per year.

You still aren’t talking a ton of money, but if each of 999 listeners streamed a song once per month, the artist could be losing close to $40 per song per year.