It's a pity this didn't get more attention on here, as this is a surprisingly detailed article on the subject.
The one tiny aspect I've been thinking about a lot lately involves the anti-Spotify crowd. This piece throws in some speculative numbers about iTunes vs. Pandora vs. Spotify, and explains that if only non-paying Spotify users listen to a given track it takes 600 listens to equal one iTunes purchase, in terms of royalties. (For paying Spotify users, BTW, it's only 60 listens.)
Although some artists, notably Radiohead, are taking Spotify to task over this, I'm curious about why this is considered differently to the old dynamic of broadcast radio vs. LP/tape/CD, where there was no way one broadcast of a song cost the station as much as buying a single, and that broadcast was nearly guaranteed to reach more than 600 listeners. Is it that Spotify users can choose the songs they listen to, and maybe burn themselves out on their favorite tracks, where in radio they'd run a few chosen songs into the ground but if you wanted to hear anything else you had to buy the album?
What's even more noteworthy to me was Pink Floyd putting just about everything they've got on Spotify. They were one of the famous holdouts on iTunes ostensibly because they wanted their works to be experienced as entire albums, and are part of the group attacking Pandora over its seeking of royalty cuts.
