The idea that Spotify is somehow bad for the music industry is farcical. I read today that Coldplay are not releasing their new album on Spotify - ostensibly because you should listen to the album as a whole rather than as individual tidbits. Oddly enough, you can still buy those individual tidbits on iTunes and listen to them in whatever order you want, but I guess I must be missing the point by saying that.
The most common complaint I hear about Spotify and other streaming services is this notion that the artists don't get paid enough. According to recent articles, artists receive around 1/3 of a penny per stream. That puts Spotify a lot more in line with Last.fm if you look at this famous infographic.
I think where a lot of people miss the point is around the pay-per-stream idea. If I buy an album that's good, there's a better-than-average chance I'll listen to it dozens of times. There are songs on my iTunes player that, were they records, would be worn down from the amount of times I've listened to them. So on a service like Spotify, those artists (I'm looking at you Pearl Jam, Tool and others) would be received 1/3 of a penny hundreds, if not thousands of times. Instead, they received a fixed fee from me several years ago. So which one of those makes more sense.
The reality is that most commercial revenues for bands nowadays comes from touring. The era of the fat advance signed in a room filled with cocaine, hookers and fat, sweaty music execs is over. What people want now is quality. Where large sections of my youth were blighted by good bands releasing crappy albums replete with endless filler tracks, now the onus is on bands to perhaps release fewer albums with better tracks that will be streamed more often - and touring more often, selling more t-shirts and merchandise to make more money. It's not rocket science.
One last point - especially for Coldplay. I use Spotify (which I pay for) a lot. I listen to a ton of new music on there. For the first time in a while, I listen to albums the whole way through. I'll playlist an entire new release and listen to it on the bus or on the tube and hear it the way the artist wanted it to be heard. Just some food for thought....