For an independent musician such as myself, it’s often difficult to make money from music. Having another job is usually the only way to make ends meet while you carve out a niche for yourself in the music world in your spare time.

So often, web services like Myspace and Virb are keen to get you to upload your music but not so keen to pay royalties for its use. Established musicians, with membership of royalty collection organisations like PRS and MCPS, are far more likely to be paid for use of their music online than those just starting out. “We’re helping unsigned musicians out!”, they’ll say. “Put your music up on our service so an A&R man can hear you and sign you up!”.

The alternative argument is that people are visiting Myspace etc. to listen to the music for free. All the while, these sites are raking in advertising money off the back of people listening to unsigned bands. Whether that’s right or not (and that’s a complex debate), it was a breath of fresh air when Last.fm announced their plan to pay royalties to all artists, even those without the backing of a collections society to fight their corner.

Earlier this year Last.fm’s press release went out announcing their Artist Royalty Programme and it was smiles all round. Then, nothing… until today. Yes, as of today Last.fm are counting every play of my songs on their streaming radio service and at the end of October I’ll find out how much my first payment will be.

It’s not likely to be much. Their rate per-play is tiny and it’s not like I have hundreds of people listening to my music on there every day. Still, the fact that a web service is willing to open its pockets and cough up to the people that keep its service going is encouraging.

So, who’s next to open their wallet? Given the lack of profit on most Web 2.0 services’ balance sheets I won’t hold my breath, but it really should be something that these startups factor into their business models from the beginning.