[…] Casey Rae, deputy director of the musicians advocacy group The Future of Music Coalition, said he’s all for new approaches that pay artists directly rather than funneling money into the “black hole” of major-record-label accounting. But he was still skeptical of Rdio’s offer, which he saw as mainly a public relations effort.

He argued that there’s a finite number of fans an artist can deliver to Rdio, so there’s only so much an artist can hope to make from the new system. But those customers can deliver far more in value to the service than Rdio will ever pay to the artist who recruited them, Rae-Hunter said.

“Just because you’re underpaying artists,” he said, “doesn’t mean you’re making up for it by having them be your best marketers.”