http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/s...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7590782/Spotify-reject...
So, phew, back to enjoying Spotify :-D
For example, there are plenty of radio stations who set up deals to play a new artist often for few royalties, because it's a cheap(er) way of promoting new and unknown artists.
Actually, no, you tell me precisely how much less artists earn from radio stations with few listeners. I think it might be the opposite to what you're trying to argue.
The only data that I have available is for the Swedish market. The Swedish Performing Rights Society, STIM, collect fees from everyone who plays music. This quote is from their annual report (source at the bottom):
"A 3-minute song played on one of Sweden's national radio channels produces around SEK 100 for authors and music publishers to share."
"A 3-minute song that is played on one of the commercial radio stations produces around SEK 3 for authors and music publishers to share."
Of course, listener numbers differ, there are radio programs on national radio that have 1 million listeners. A conservative estimate for an average listener number on national radio would be 50,000.
100 SEK is $13.46 according to Google, let's call it $15 to be conservative.
So 100 SEK for 50,000 plays equals $0.0003 per play on Swedish national radio. As you can see from the above the national radio pay a lot more per play than commercial stations.
1 million plays on national radio would in the best of cases give $300 for all the rights holders to share.
In the case of Lady Gaga's Poker Face, as explained in another article linked in this thread, the income would be split 50/50 between Lady Gaga and her Swedish songwriter (don't know the exact roles here but it's not important).
This means that the total payout for 1M plays of Poker Face from Spotify would be $167 * 2 = $334.
So even in this case the income for 1M plays on Spotify exceeds the equivalent income from 1M plays on Swedish national radio. Now, the Spotify payout numbers reported here are from the absolute first beginnings of Spotify and don't necessarily reflect the payout rates that are in place now when the service is more mature, as was explained in the other article further up in the thread.
STIM's latest annual report in English: http://bit.ly/9ZW85p
Very similar to CD sales -- the record companies take the profits and pay the artists very little. Exactly the opposite of what it should be.