Why do people keep repeating information that is several years old? In Sweden, Spotify is the second largest source of revenue for the labels. Of course, I can't promise that the labels actually pay their artists. Read here: http://www.thelocal.se/38684/20120124/
Because Spotify and other all-you-can-eat music subscription services are no more likely to earn you a decent living as an artist than the shenanigans the labels have been pulling with advances on exorbitantly priced production and distribution services for decades.
Spotify may well be providing significant revenue to the labels, but as Derek Webb pointed out, it's a raw deal that devalues music in general with little upside to anyone in the industry (http://derekwebb.tumblr.com/post/13503899950/giving-it-away-...).
Now sure, maybe labels have been overpricing music with $20 CDs and they're ripe for disruption. But at the same time, why should artists be keen on trading in their overpaid RIAA-type management for a handful of small tech startups with no credible upside (how viral would you have to go to earn a million dollars?). The fact that Spotify is consumer-friendly means very little to a starving artist. If I were a musician I certainly wouldn't be buying into that system. Instead I'd be tolerating piracy and doing what I could to differentiate myself in the high-value channels (ie. people buying music).
If music is devalued, it's because a) there is vastly more of it than there has ever been and b) other media compete for the same money.
If I were a musician in it for the money, I'd put my music out on every available channel (even free ones), then make money on tours and exclusive merchandise.
Way back before piracy and good streaming services, the average person could not easily discover new music. Now they get exposed to all sorts of stuff through these channels, and there is very little barrier to listen to something. This then turns into people buying concert tickets etc.
Not sure if you read Derek Webb's article, but he makes the case that piracy is better for musician's than Spotify, because with Spotify people have paid for it so the artist never stands a chance of making significant money from a fan, whereas with piracy the will have the internal understanding that they haven't really given anything to the artist, and eventually they may decide to buy an album.
As easy as it is to hate the big bad RIAA, it's a red herring. Musicians are under no obligation to support any particular business model. And contrary to what you say, if every musician puts their music on Spotify, then Spotify becomes the obvious consumer choice, and that sets a maximum value that music is worth, and that value is orders of magnitude less than it can be worth under the iTunes model. Musicians don't have to put their music into Spotify though, and as long as significant numbers of them don't then the higher value market for music can still exist. Piracy is definitely inevitable, and I believe it's a waste of time to try to fight it at the individual scale, but there is no reason artists have to bend over and accept a fraction-of-a-penny pay-per-stream model as inevitable.
You're ignoring the long tail of streaming. Streaming revenue will continue bubbling in, while sales are shortlived. In many cases streaming revenue will surpass sales within a year or two.
