When their licensing fees are barely paying the people who produce the content then I don't think onerous is the right way to describe it. Spotify produce far too much consumer surplus and in return underpay artists and themselves. I'm guessing the backers think this is OK, but inorder for low cost low margin to work you need massive scale which may work for spotify, but is not really sustainable and ends up being another example of silicon valley shitting on content producers.

I've never bought a single song on iTunes, but I went out of my way to pay Spotify $5 a month.

Before that I relied on grooveshark, last.fm, youtube, and, a long time ago kazaa and napster. I can't be the only one. There are just too many 'free' alternatives.

When the 'barely paid' content producers would have gotten zilch if it weren't for Spotify, I wouldn't say that they're being shat on.

On another note, few would bemoan the plight of ISPs being paid less per bits transferred than they were a decade ago, why should we consider it a bad thing that per unit prices of content have dropped? Are the top artists of today any poorer than their counterparts from the 80s? Would the smaller artist even exist if it weren't for the proliferation of these cheap and convenient content delivery services?