I just arrived to this article in The Telegraph where an executive from Universal Music, discloses a couple of facts from Spotify which I find quite interesting.

First, Spotify has two forms of paying to the record labels for the music royalties:

• On a per stream basis (so, every time you play a song in your Spotify, they pay to the corresponding label). This is done in Spain and UK.
• As a percentage from the income (subscriptions and advertisement). This is done in Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden and Finland), and in France.

Secondly, the article gives information about the break-even point for Spotify. Spotify needs around a 10% of the total users to be subscribed to the premium service to start earning money…

And last but not least, that break-even has been reached everywhere except in Spain and UK (funny enough, those places where the “per stream” policy prevails). The article also mentions that it is being tough in these countries, due to the huge acceptance Spotify has had… As they say: “it was a more difficult task to convert 10 per cent of a much larger number into subscribers”, and that is the reason why it is so difficult to get invitations lately.