Talking of Spotify, there has been much speculation on the t'internet about how much money artists are receiving, or not, from the popular streaming music service.

Spotify have, of course, been very vague about how much they are paying record companies and collecting societies for the rights to play music, though it is widely assumed their label royalty payments must be more than those of other online music services, simply because major record companies would only have licensed their tunes to such a user-friendly totally on-demand service if the price was right. That said, it's also assumed that the collecting societies, who licence tracks on behalf of the music publishers, must have offered Spotify a below rate card deal, because if the digital service was paying PRS and their like the going rate they'd be haemorrhaging cash left, right and centre.

Either way, the latest chatter on Spotify royalties stems from reports that Lady Gaga recently received a Spotify royalty cheque from the Swedish equivalent of PRS for just $167. This has led to much chattering that either Spotify are screwing the artists or, perhaps, the major record companies, who are shareholders in the streaming music company, are taking the lion's share of any royalty revenues.

The pro-file-sharing brigade have used the story to justify music fans accessing other free but illegal sources of content, arguing that the per-play fee to Lady Gaga must be so small that she's not really any worse off if people steal her music. Torrent Freak quote a Swedish artist called Magnus Uggla who recently withdrew his music from Spotify when he saw how small his royalty cheque from the streaming music company was, declaring: "I'd rather be raped by The Pirate Bay than have my music on Spotify". His anger seemed to be framed more at Spotify's major label shareholders than the technology firm's management.

Of course the Lady Gaga royalty story, even if true, tells us next to nothing. First we don't know what period the royalty payment covered. Second, presumably Swedish collecting society STIM only pays out for Swedish plays of Gaga's music, and we don't know how much her music is played there, nor what she's getting from PRS for Spotify plays in the UK. Also, STIM may well be offering Spotify bargain basement rates to help them get off the ground. And the $167 may be Gaga's personal cut of a bigger pay out to the singer's publishing company. Plus she co-writes all her songs, so may only be receiving a small cut of the overall royalty paid on those songs, depending on the deal between her and her songwriting collaborators.

And none of this accounts for what the recording royalty may have been. True this would have been paid to Gaga's record company, but is likely to have been much bigger than the publishing royalty collected by STIM. Whether Gaga would get a cut of recording royalty money, and if so how much, will, of course, depend on her record contract with Universal.

The fact that additional money, over and above Gaga's $167, goes to multi-national record companies and music publishers will not impress the pro-P2P lobby of course. Though said corporates would presumably point out that without their initial investment in the Gaga brand she wouldn't be able to earn thousands just by showing up to events.

Of course, the fact that the major record companies sweeten their digital deals by taking large upfront payments and equity, none of which has to be shared with artists, is an issue for the wider music industry. Especially if record companies then accept much lower per-play royalties, reducing the monies earned by artists. And of course royalty rates for services like Spotify are a big issue in general - given the digital service providers tell us said royalties need to be slashed long term, while labels, publishers, artists and songwriters all haggle for bigger digital revenues.

So lots to talk about. But I'm far from convinced by the argument that if Lady Gaga only got $167 from her most recent Spotify royalty cheque from STIM then people might as well steal her digital tunes rather than access them via a licensed platform.