[m_eiman]

Sorry about that, Expressen is one of Sweden's two main tabloids. Here's a rough translation:

Lady Gaga had the most popular song on Spotify, with one million listens. Now she gets her money from STIM [Sweden's collecting agency for artists etc]: 1,150 SEK ($170 USD).

Lady Gaga's "Poker face" was the most popular song on Spotify during the music service's first five months, according to the first payment of STIM money made on behalf of Spotify, according to STIM's own paper "Stim-nytt". The song was played one million times - which yields 2,300 SEK ($340 USD) that Lady Gaga and songwriter partner Redone share.

Dogge [Swedish artist] upset

Rapper and songwriter Dogge Doggelito is upset when he hears the sum. - It's sick. We musicians have no rights, you don't get paid any more. Lady Gaga would have made more money driving an unlicensed cab one night at [known place in Stockholm].

"Better than file sharing"

Artist and songwriter Alexander Bard [another Swedish artist] doesn't want to comment on the sum without knowning how Lady Gaga's contract with her label looks, but says: - 2,300 is more than zero which she would have gotten from Pirate Bay. It's better than file sharing, says Alexander Bard.

The future

Both Alexander Bard and Dogge Doggelito believe that Spotify and similar services are the future. - These are teething troubles. I hope that we creators one day in the future will be paid reasonably and fairly, says Dogge Doggelito. "Stim-nytt" compares the sum to if "Poker face" had been played in the radio show "Sommar" that averages a million listeners. Then the STIM payment would have been only 100 SEK ($15 USD).

[pyrmont]

Sorry, why is radio a relevant comparison? When I listen to the radio, I listen to songs that are selected by the radio station. I don't get to play any song I want as often as I want. The correct comparison is not with radio but with an mp3 download. Radio didn't stop people needing to buy an album/single if they wanted to listen to a song. Spotify does.

(I also note that the amount referred to in this article is the amount given to songwriters. Not all musicians are songwriters.)

[m_eiman]

It's relevant since with both radio and streamed services the artist (or mostly the artist's label...) gets paid every time the song is listened to. With an MP3 you only count the number of downloads, not the number of times it's played.

This means that with downloads you get a rather crude measure of a song's popularity - you count the number of listeners instead of how often the song is actually played. It also means that a popular song will never stop being a source of income with a streaming service, as opposed to downloads where every user pays for the song only once.

About the privilege of selecting songs, according to the numbers in the article you pay 23 times (or maybe 12 times, it's a bit unclear) as much for being able to do so than you do if someone else selects the song for you.

Also, unless I'm mistaken it's the recoding's copyright owner - the label in most cases - that gets paid, and they in turn pay the artist. According to that other infographic, the artist gets about 15% of the amount the label gets.