Sorry about the previous post ...

"What does the average musician make when their work is listened to on Spotify? Does anyone in this thread really know?"

Is a good question. I know a person with music there, he tells me a typical payment for a play from one of the streaming websites is something like 0.4p. There are probably people here who have numbers, does this agree with their experience ?

"So where is the money really going? "

To the people who run the websites ? This is the internet advertising economy - the music on spotify is clickbait to attract eardrums that they can rent to the advertisers, unless they're paid not to.

I have some recordings that will be hitting the Big Wide World shortly, and the above is why I won't be putting them out via the streaming sites. I'll be putting them on bandcamp, who make their money by selling recordings and taking a percentage. From the musician's point of view, this seems a much healthier idea.