Will Spotify Be Fair to Artists?

Here at South By Southwest Interactive, the keynote interview of Daniel Ek, the 26-year-old founder of European music service Spotify, provided some satisfying insight into the major new music site.

Spotify has built a lovely music application that uses a peer-to-peer architecture to stream music at lightning speeds (a real improvement over the sometimes spotty service that comes with many other music streaming applications). The site is only licensed in Europe, but Ek says the site has 7 million users in 6 countries, and he’s been working hard to get it licensed in the United States. Users can listen to music for free, with ads, or can pay for a subscription that grants access to perks such as the Spotify mobile app, and song downloads.

I couldn’t help noticing, however, Ek’s artful dodge to the question of how artists are paid by his service. The subject was broached by an audience member, who identified himself as an independent musician and thanked Ek profusely for the great application. He wanted to know how much he would be paid.