In the face of criticism from the likes of Nigel Godrich, Thom Yorke, and David Byrne, Spotify has launched a new site called Spotify Artists, as The Guardian reports. On Spotify Artists, musicians can learn about the company's business model and see analytics for the streaming patterns of their own music.

The company has put forth the claim that once Spotify launches in new countries and reaches 40 million paid subscribers—up from six million as of this March—earnings for artists will increase drastically. They'll soon introduce ways for bands to sell tickets and merch on Spotify (the company will not take a cut) and to access data on gender, location, and age of their listeners.

Spotify has also revealed that the average payout for a single track stream is between $0.006 and $0.0084. But, according to Spotify's Mark Williamson, the director of artist services, "per-stream is a really flawed way of thinking about it." Payouts are determined by a more complex formula, he told The Guardian, accounting for "[an artist's] share of total monthly streams" and other factors. One million Spotify streams are worth at least double what an artist could earn from video streams or online radio stations, according to Williamson.

Williamson also told The Guardian:

The position we take is look, we know Spotify is not perfect for all artists yet, but this is the theory behind it, this is where we are, and this is where we're going... With any format change in music–CD and iTunes included–there's a lot of confusion around how these different models work, and quite often some serious skepticism. We understand that's out there, so we want to be as clear and transparent as we possibly can explaining how Spotify fits in.

According to Spotify, nearly 70% of Spotify's total revenues go to "music industry rightsholders" like labels and publishers, which pay musicians and songwriters. Spotify has paid over $500 million to them in 2013. According to Spotify, in July of this year, a "niche indie album" would have earned $3,300 while a "global hit album" earned $425,000. Spotify estimates that when the company reaches 40 million paid subscribers, the "indie" album would reach $17,000 per month while the "global hit" would earn over $2 million.

Read Damon Krukowski's 2012 article "Making Cents" on streaming services.