Interesting; I never believed in pay-per-play since in the end this would become too expensive for the listener when the listeners needed to pay for it. Spotify and other streaming services are in the end much less expensive and those models are around and will stay around. Yes, artists do not get paid, or at least get paid a very small amount. The question one can ask: "What is it music artists have to do to get paid?". This could be selling their music on media like vinyl, CD, or digitally. One can also say: an artist shall get paid when performing live somewhere, as a singer, as a DJ or something. The whole thing with selling music on media, without performing basically, became on industry on its own; for obvious reasons! When selling a product in a crowded market, a lot of marketing and all needs to be put into building the artist brand, and pushing the whatever album the artists wants to sell. And for obvious reasons that part of the product selling became expensive therefore leaving the artist with little money. With digital music sellers, like iTunes, Beatport etc the fee to the artists increased quite a bit; But at the same time, a lot more music is offered increasing competition. And yes, people do also pirate music, ie copy without paying for it, but one can also ask the question if we would have no digital way of selling music, would we know many of the artists we know now? As in many of the artistic segments whether it be painters, sculpturists and also musicians, the top of the pyramid in its segment gets all the attention and receives the largest part of the total amount of money paid to the musicians. I'm not saying that is the right way, but that is how it works in a free society, in a capitalistic system we live in. One can create something top level with highest quality, but when the art is not sold as a business, no one will notice it and the artist will not sell anything, from the art itself to getting gigs and shows.