Music streaming service Spotify has gone on a charm offensive to win back major artists who have criticized the way the company pays out royalties.

The Swedish business, which was valued last month at $4 billion, launched a new website that explains how royalties are paid to rights holders in an attempt to bring more transparency to the process.

Spotify came under fire from Radiohead and Atoms for Peace frontman Thom Yorke, who dubbed the service "the last desperate fart of a dying corpse", arguing that the company pays meager royalties for streaming artists' songs.

But the music streaming service said it has paid out over $1 billion in royalties to date, $500 million of which were paid in 2013 alone.

The move marks the first time Spotify has released royalty payout information in an attempt to quiet criticism of its business model.

Spotify announced that it makes an average "per stream" payment to rights holders of between $0.006 and $0.0084, meaning for every one million listeners of an artist's track Spotify pays rights holders between $6,000 to $8,400.