One of the key talking points that we’ve heard from the "haters" of the new music business models is the claim that Spotify pays next-to-nothing to artists. This is really based on a few stories, taken totally out of context, concerning a few artists who received relatively small checks from Spotify. David Lowery actually used this as a key point in his screed against young music fans and their supposedly "unethical" behavior: to him, even if you are listening to a legal, licensed service like Spotify, you’re "unethical" because he’s heard rumors that Spotify doesn’t pay enough.
However, the more you look, the more you realize that Spotify actually pays out quite a lot. A few months ago, someone at one of the music collection societies told me about an analysis they had done concerning the amount of money paid per listen — comparing Spotify to radio, iTunes and lots of other things. When you knock it down to a per listen basis, it turns out that Spotify pays a hell of a lot more than any of those other sources.
via Myth Dispensing: The Whole 'Spotify Barely Pays Artists' Story Is Bunk | Techdirt.