"There are indie labels that, as opposed to the majors and Merlin members, receive no advance, receive no minimum per stream and only get a 50% share of ad revenue on a pro-rata basis (which so far has amounted to next to nothing)." Spotify also bought off the labels by giving them a bunch of shares (18%?) Better yet, even if an artist is with a major label, apparently the revenues labels might realize from share sales are non attributable to artists and hence stay purely with the labels. This seems like utter bullshit but there you have it. [2]
A swedish band Magnus Uggla -- apparently well established -- said "after six months on the site he'd earned 'what a mediocre busker could earn in a day'" [2]
A Norwegian record label called Racing Junior earned "NOK 19 ($3.00 USD) after their artists had been streamed over 55,100 times" [1] (english) [3] (swedish)
British musician Jons Hopkins earned 8 pounds ($12.48 at current rates) for 90k plays, or $0.00013 per play [4,5]. Even if a normal purchaser played a song 250 times, (9e4/250 * 0.7) = $252, or 20 times more money.
All in all, pretty appalling. I'm a Spotify subscriber but I'm going to have to rethink it.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify#Criticism
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/aug/17/major-...
[3] http://www.dagbladet.no/2009/08/11/kultur/musikk/spotify/mus...
[4] https://twitter.com/#!/Jon_Hopkins_/status/13714775382964633...
