To make a point, FarmVille is not high profile. It is for everyone who is anyone. On the other hand EA bought a game called Pet Society which had a loyal following whom I knew some of. The first thing EA did was change the payment model and then all hell broke loose. People I personally know started complaining and EA eventually closed down that game. The problem is not in either elitism or micro-payments but rather in the sales approach.
Wouldn't this end up leaving even more money on the table? Spotify pays artists based on their share of total plays.
Say two sites (X and Y) join up to offer a $10/month pass for unlimited access to both sites, with the say pay scheme as Spotify. Site X has 3 times as many articles/videos as Site Y. If every user reads/watches 100% of Site Y's content, Site X may still receive an equal or larger share of the payouts even though users consumed a much lower percentage of it.
The problem I see is that with spotify it's pretty easy to determine the rate of content consumption (e.g. songs or minutes listened). News sites are pretty adept at turning one piece of content into many (multi-page articles or slideshows), and the system would have to protect against that.
Some very high profile outlets (WSJ, NY Times, New Yorker, the Economist) might be able to make their own things work, but those are the exception, not the rule.