Daniel ek certainly has an enflated sense of his own importance in the general scheme of things - lot of talk but not much substance. I'm always interested to know what folks think forms a fair payout from online broadcasters - I agree with you that a shade over eight quid isn't great. But put into context against more conventional broadcast forms and their per minute royalty rate, on paper at least, it doesn't appear to be so bad.

It's probably not an 'apples for apples' comparison, but 60,000 'listens' sounds like the footprint of a medium sized local radio station - which would probably pay out no more than 8 quid (quite likely less) for one broadcast. If you discovered that one of your tracks was heard by 9 million folks on last.fm, would 165 quid seem like a fair payout? Because that's roughly all you'd get for a prime time 3 min broadcast on BBC1. Or to give a more 'real world' comparison, I often see programs I've composed for getting three or four hundred thousand views on BBC iPlayer, and I'll get pence in return.

The point I'm trying to make is that depending on the slant you give your info (and you can bet the owners go spotify and last.fm will be giving it the most skewed slant possible), your payout figures can be made to appear perfectly fair. Until the PROs can put a figure on what an online listen is worth, then it's going to be easy for the likes of spotify to take advantage of the confusion.

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