Music streaming is a very popular outlet for many artists and bands to spread their music to a worldwide audience. Many believe that streaming is enough to make a living out of in it's own right. However, the amount bands receive from each stream is miniscule. This criticism has also been echoed by artists like David Byrne and Thom Yorke towards streaming services like Spotify.
It isn't right to say that Spotify is bad because it rips off artists. With over 20 million users, Spotify is a widely used music platform. Artists can make the most of this platform, and can scatter their music to a range of international audiences throughout the world with growing music markets. It raises profile of an artist or band throughout the world.
So in a sense Spotify and many other streaming services are not big moneymaking schemes for artists, but a great promotional tool that could be used to divert towards artists' merchandise and/or music website. However, Spotify doesn't point this out and can mislead a lot of artists thinking they're heading for success by music streaming alone.
In a few years Spotify will receive a significantly higher amount of paid subscribers and maybe then artists will get a better deal from streaming. Until then Spotify should be seen as an effective promotional platform for all types of artists, but they can't live off it.
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