Spotipartners looks like a neat idea, linking people who need Spotify invites with people who have Spotify invites to give away. If you need an invite, just enter your email address and sit back and wait. If you have spare invites, enter the codes and Spotipartners will pass them on to people who need them – free of charge.

The website is linked to SpotiDJ, a service that allows you to become a Spotify DJ, adding your favourite Spotify tracks, and listening to tracks added by others. You can follow your favourite SpotiDJs, and gain followers of your own. And if you want to share whole playlists you can check out Shared Playlists, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

A key question we get asked by independent artists is, “How can I get my music onto Spotify?” It’s actually pretty easy and inexpensive to do that. And the next question is, “How much will I earn?” The amount that artists receive from Spotify is a hot topic, of interest to artists and fans alike. The short answer to the question is, “Not a lot,” but earnings aren’t everything when it comes to receiving the wide exposure that Spotify availability can generate.

Ditto Music is a service that allows artists to set up their own record label and release their music via digital stores and streaming services. Basic charges are 30p per track per store or service, and £5.00 for track storage, plus extra charges for services such as chart registration. So it’s possible to get your track available on Spotify for £5.30, or on iTunes and Spotify for £5.60. But how much will you earn?

The company is pretty upfront about potential earnings. Download stores take around a 40% commission, so a track sold for 79p via iTunes should earn the artist 49p.

For Spotify, the artist earns 0.02p per play. That means you’ll need 50 plays to earn 1p, 5,000 plays to earn £1, or half a million plays to earn £100. You’ll also get a percentage of advertising revenue, but we can safely assume that this will be even more negligible than play royalties.

Of course, that amount just represents Ditto Music’s deal. Other companies will have individual deals and receive differing amounts. Last September, Robert Fripp, the former King Crimson guitarist, revealed in his online diary that Island Records received £1.68 from Spotify for 618 streams. That’s 0.2p per play – ten times the amount Ditto Music artists receive, although obviously Island artists will need to give their label a cut of that.

It’s still not a large amount, and certainly not enough for Robert Fripp – King Crimson’s tracks have since been removed. You really need to be the likes of The Black Eyed Peas or Lady Gaga, with your tracks being streamed millions of times, to earn significant money from Spotify.

But, as we’ve said here before, the way to make money from Spotify is not by relying on royalties, but by using it as a promotional tool to encourage physical sales, including merchandise and tickets. Readers of this blog post who might have been prompted to check out King Crimson on Spotify, and perhaps go on to buy the albums, cannot do so. They can, however, check out The Black Eyed Peas or Lady Gaga.

Releasing your music on Spotify via Ditto Music won’t make you a millionaire, but it will get you music out there, maybe get it heard, and that’s a valuable starting point for any artist.

Remoteless is a new iPhone app that allows users to control Spotify running on a PC from an iPhone. It works over wi-fi or via the internet, and allows you to search and browse for music, start, pause, skip, change volume, start playlists and more, all remotely.

Much of this is rendered pointless if you have Spotify Mobile, but if you want to control Spotify on your PC without getting up from the sofa, then Remoteless could be just the thing for you.

Remoteless works with both Spotify free and premium and costs £1.79 from the App Store.