You sound like you might be a musician/artist. It's really a shame at how many artists are angry at consumers because of piracy. Record labels love this, because you're fighting their battles for them. They're using artists' anger of THEM not paying artists, and projecting it onto piracy.
1) Musicians should be angry with their labels. 2) Musicians should not buy into the bullshit that piracy is decreasing their cut. "Hey man, we'd pay you more, but there's so much piracy going on! The revenues aren't there! You should be mad at the pirates."
I've worked in the film, video game, and now music software businesses, all of which suffer heavily from piracy.
The ironic thing is that all the defenders of "free culture" piracy do is drive creators into the arms of Orwellian walled gardens like iTunes and empower legislators to write dumb laws like SOPA.
TLDR: Spotify has been accused of barely paying artists, when in fact they pay the labels, who in turn barely pay the artists. But if you search for artists who hate Spotify because of their low income, you'll find plenty of rants.
Sounds like the benefits of signing up to a label outweigh the downsides...hence why they are still signing up for labels in the first place. Everything might not be puppy dogs and ice cream between the artists and the labels, but the current popular are have still signed to the majors because they provide the backing and infrastructure to take them to the next level which they don't think they can do on their own.
1) Musicians should be angry with their labels. 2) Musicians should not buy into the bullshit that piracy is decreasing their cut. "Hey man, we'd pay you more, but there's so much piracy going on! The revenues aren't there! You should be mad at the pirates."