Universal Reportedly Wants Spotify To Scale Back Its Free Streaming 117
An anonymous reader writes with news that Universal CEO Lucian Grainge is not a big fan of free streaming music. "Spotify might have bent over backwards to lift restrictions on its free streaming service a couple of years ago, but at least one music label appears eager to turn back the clock. Financial Times sources understand that Universal is using licensing negotiations to squeeze Spotify and demand more limits for those who don't pay up, such as restricting the amount of time they can play tunes in a given month. The publisher isn't confirming anything, but CEO Lucian Grainge has lately been chastising the free, ad-based streaming model — it's no secret that he would like more paying customers. According to one insider, Universal believes that Spotify is directly hurting sales at stores like iTunes."
Or, from another perspective ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, you know, maybe the insiders are morons who believe in their unrealistic assumptions about just how much they're going to sell.
Because, you know, according to the copyright idiots, more value than the GDP of the US or any other country is lost to piracy.
Maybe the pay-for-play digital music market is exceedingly finite, and your wishful thinking of getting billions of dollars for doing nothing is complete crap?
Re:Or, from another perspective ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it funny to recall that, only a few years ago, it was iTunes that was the enemy according to the big labels - and they did everything they could to undermine Apple's influence.
They figured out how to monetize that... and I'm sure they'll figure out how to turn Spotify into a profit generator as well.
Re:Or, from another perspective ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Or, from another perspective ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course it's hurting sales.
Radio stations based on a song are often superior to my collection. At work it's all we use now, yeah yeah, anecdote.
Radio stations that play what we want are better than Dj ing from our own collection, and way better than the radio.
I was converted to a paying customer to get specific songs when I wanted too though. I think that what they really should attack though is custom playlists on the desktop (to maximize revenue, as a happy paying customer, I just hope they don't kill t
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Radio stations based on a song are often superior to my collection.
Radio stations that play what we want are better than Dj ing from our own collection, and way better than the radio.
I've read these sentences a few times, can't get them to make any sense at all.
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hmmm, sleep is good...
I think my vague point was that the free radio offered by Spotify is (usually) better than playing from my (or another's) music collection. The free Spotify radio eliminates the need to buy any music, because it's better than the music one would select and buy on their own.
Unlike radio, which was a way to advertise music to buy, I regularly see Spotify (and even Pandora with it's limited selection) as a substitute for ever needing to buy music, far more often than radio acted that way.
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Re:Or, from another perspective ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Or, you know, perhaps it is hurting sales because it's competing. Which is perfectly legitimate, free market and all that.
And by the same token, it's perfectly legitimate for Universal to threaten to remove their catalogue, free market and all that.
Spotify's competitivity derives in no small part from its low cost base. When the first reports of Spotify's royalty payments came out, I looked at my CD collection and tried to estimate how much in royalties I had paid to artists. I think I figured that in a lifetime of listening to Spotify, I would generate something like five to ten CDs worth of royalties, or something crazy like that.
Not surprising (Score:3)
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What they really want is a continuation of the payola system they have now with radio where they get to manipulate the market, promoting only the artists they've anointed and locking everyone else out. Free streaming internet music disrupts that.
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they tried that kind of shit already years and years ago you know.
right now they're bitching about low royalties on spotify, on stuff they uploaded to youtube for even lower royalties - WITH A FRIGGIN VIDEO and extras like live performances and such.
Message to all braindead CEOs out there (Score:5, Insightful)
The middle class income keeps stagnating and prices keep going up. The first thing to go is entertainment.
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This is precisely what I was thinking: my income has not gone up in real terms in the last 7 years. If anything, it's gone down, down, down. I don't even have to buy it a drink and it goes down.
Food prices, petrol prices, mortgage interest rates, and rents, all go up in this time, but my wage stays the same.
Let's take a wild guess as to why I've spent nothing on entertainment in the last eighteen months. Could it be the record profits made by the media cartels? (I work for one, and they're stealing a go
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Let's take a wild guess as to why I've spent nothing on entertainment in the last eighteen months. Could it be the record profits made by the media cartels?
Could it be that it's reasonably easy to get media for free?
If it was 1985 and your options were to copy an album, cassette or VHS tape (in 'real time') would you have spent more on entertainment?
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You answered your own question by bringing up cassette and VHS copying. And it's only free if your time is worthless - watch as Game of Thrones bitorrents drop as HBO finally deploys a streaming service that isn't tied to a cable subscription.
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That little nugget again... OF COURSE your time is worthless. Wages are stagnant. Good jobs are harder to come by. If you have a decent job, it's a salary job where you don't get ANY money for working extra. If your job is crap, you have to go through hoops just to get enough hours to feed yourself.
Free time is either easier to come by or devalued by current labor standards.
Also, there's no opportunity cost in letting a machine work for you.
Re:Message to all braindead CEOs out there (Score:5, Informative)
The middle class income keeps stagnating and prices keep going up. The first thing to go is entertainment.
Believe it or not, as someone in the entertainment industry (videogames) who has worked through a couple of recessions, my job has been far more recession-resistant than I would have anticipated. No, the first thing to go is expensive luxuries, or other big-ticket items. Even during a recession, most people are still working, and even if they don't have enough for more expensive purchases, they still apparently have enough to buy a videogame or two, go out to see a movie or to dinner, or pay for some music.
I'd blame the major media industry's resistance to new business models more than anything. Oh, and the fact that they target their customers with lawsuits and push shitty laws through Congress. It's no wonder they've engendered such hatred among their customers (not that EA and Activision haven't done the same, of course). I've never understood how companies that make entertainment products can manage to continuously piss off their customers with such regularity.
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I've never understood how companies that make entertainment products can manage to continuously piss off their customers with such regularity.
It's easy -- and here's the secret: you aren't buying the brand. When was the last time you went to see a film because it was by Paramount? When did you last buy a CD because it was by Universal? Probably never. We do not associate the product with the publisher, so hatred of the publisher doesn't have a big effect on sales.
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I'm sure Cream are still selling well -- Sunshine of Your Love is something of a psychedelic anthem.
On a more serious note, I am sick fed up to the back teeth of this constant mantra of "buggy whips". The controversy over Spotify's business model is *not* *about* *technology* -- it's about price. Spotify wants to convince their customers that it's about luddites dinging the technology, but it's not:
1: Spotify does not pay sustainable royalties to their suppliers.
2: Spotify cannot afford to pay more to its
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there's been more music (and books, and photos and movies) genereated in the last 10 years then in all of history before it
supply went waaaaaay up, which means that prices have to drop (and yeah I know most of it is crap, but 90% of everything is crap)
In theory, that's a sound argument -- but your argument is predicated on the total spend remaining static, and therefore being spread further, and I don't believe that's what's happening at the moment. I believe people's overall music spend is dropping. Mine certainly has, but maybe I'm extrapolating too much from myself.
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5. Pumping out garbage!=$Profit$
It's apparently Universals model that is unsustainable.
It may be garbage, but it sells in volume. It's not Universal's profit levels that I'm worried about, but artists'.
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Eh, close.
For most, order of necessity goes:
- Food, water, heat(A/C..?), gas(car), cell phone, home internet.
As the ability to provide these for oneself starts to become difficult, as we're seeing, entertainment WILL get squeezed. We saw a touch of this type of reality, when gas hit over $5 a few years back. If anyone, including you, think they're immune, or 'not really effected' with the worsening income gap, I have some bad news for you!
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Well, he's not wrong there (Score:3)
Universal believes that Spotify is directly hurting sales at stores like iTunes.
Universal's belief is most certainly correct to some extent, but is that a bad thing? True fans, I think, would find other ways of supporting the artists they love, and I'd guess the ones who do nothing but stream wouldn't have spent more money on it in the first place.
Re:Well, he's not wrong there (Score:5, Insightful)
Who gives a fuck about supporting some artist? This is about profit for Universal, the artist is the necessary evil to your money!
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What I am confused about is why isn't universal getting the same cut for paid or free streaming? Or if they are, why the fuck do they care who is paying the bill. Free streaming should have adds involved and those adds should pay the same cut to universal as the paid streaming does. Or am I missing something here?
It seems to me that if Universal doesn't like the free streaming, they likely wouldn't like the paid streaming either. Maybe it's the premium version of spotify that allows you to save songs and pl
Radio vs. jukebox (Score:4, Informative)
why isn't universal getting the same cut for paid or free streaming?
As I explained in a comment to a previous story [slashdot.org], US copyright law provides for a compulsory license to stream sound recordings at a fixed royalty so long as a service resembles radio more than a jukebox. Pandora, for example, selects songs in a similar style to the artist whose name you key in and is therefore not considered an "interactive service" that substitutes for purchases.
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True fans, I think, would find other ways of supporting the artists they love, and I'd guess the ones who do nothing but stream wouldn't have spent more money on it in the first place.
"I think" -- words to build a business model on.
People in general are self-centred and riddled with feelings of entitlement. We all tend to feel "I've done my bit, now I deserve a reward" -- whether that's slacking off on your turn on the cleaning rota "because I always have to take the bins out, so I deserve a break", giving yourself a pay rise as the director of a charity "because I deserve it after all the lives I've saved", or claiming excessive expenses as a public servant "because really, after all I'
Universal wants me to use YouTube more (Score:5, Insightful)
Because... universal has hosted every single song in its library on Youtube.... for free.
And I don't have to deal with some shitty streaming service deciding what it is going to play next. I can just play the exact songs I want.
And those ads on youtube? Well, adblock kills them. I try to keep adblock off if I want to support the person that posts the video... but if I either don't care or I actively want them to make no money... then adblock is happening.
Here is the thing, Universal... the CD is dead. The Record is dead.
What did you people do before records? You existed and your people made money.
I know they were on the radio... I know they were doing concerts. I know they were singing in advertising. I know they were getting cast in movies or used by movies to do singing bits.
That is what you're going back to.
Because the CD is dead.
Spotify etc are at best like the radio of old. And the radio didn't charge listeners to listen. You tune in and listen. Put an ad in there if that makes you happy. What money you get is going to come by taking a percentage of that revenue.
If that isn't a lot... don't know what to tell you. The ad companies are rating the VALUE of your listeners as that amount of money.
If reaching those people with an ad is worth 2 cents then your music is likely not worth a great deal more than that.
Get over it.
Find something else for your artists to do to make money besides make records. Records are dead.
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It used to be that the machinery that was needed to create lots of LPs or even CDs was expensive and the few bands that made it mega paid for the studios, who then could record and release music from all the other 'hopefuls,' who might one day also be mega.
Well guess what? Technology means it is now trivial to record and publish music; there is no longer a need for the industry at all. We are back to musicians making music because they want to, the good ones will be able to make a living and the v
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Technology means it is now trivial to record and publish music
But is it also trivial to ensure that your music is truly original, not an infringing accidental copy of an existing song?
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They would return no hits. Shazam and Google Song Search work with specific recordings. They cannot identify a new recording of an existing song. SoundHound claims to be able to identify humming, but it failed to find matches to pop songs that I used to test. Nor can any such automated service identify the sort of comprehensive nonliteral similarity for which Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were recently busted.
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But is it also trivial to ensure that your music is truly original, not an infringing accidental copy of an existing song?
Because the labels are so [youtube.com] very [youtube.com] good [youtube.com] at making sure that songs stay musically original.
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Even if there is "nothing morally wrong", a copyright infringement lawsuit can still bankrupt you.
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I Listen to I (heart) Radio. It's owned by Clear Channel, which also owns 800 radio stations. Somehow I doubt that record companies want to piss them off.
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Some aspects of the studio are good. Getting an agent is still a good idea. Getting some sort of mentoring is good. Having an agency that can jam a lot of talented people together to form a more marketable product is good. This guy can sing, this guy plays the drums, this guy plays the guitar... you all are in a band now... come up with a name by the time I get back and we'll see if we need to buy some songs from some song writers.
Etc.
There's value in the institution. But the institution needs to get over t
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Spotify etc are at best like the radio of old.
Spotify etc. are /better/ than the radio of old. With Spotify, the publishers can get paid - even if a miniscule amount - everytime anyone listens to a song. With Spotify etc., a truckload of accurate information is gathered about what songs are popular (most listened to) and which songs are not, allowing them to better gauge what sorts of new music would bring in the big bucks. With Spotify etc., they get all sorts of information about who their listeners are;
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Spotify etc. are /better/ than the radio of old.
Each extra listener increases bandwidth costs, which old radio didn't. This is a trade-off for all the demographic info that the publishers get, so it's a direct cost paid for some marketing information.
Plus it's generally easier to record songs off the radio than it is off Spotify
I'd disagree with that. On Spotify et al, I've got my recording+processing equipment built into my listening equipment. That's not necessarily the case with radio, and the best I could hope for is a 2nd-gen analog copy anyhow.
So why does the music industry hate streaming music so much when radio is in every way an inferior distribution / advertising method?
Change is risk, and big business is vehemently opposed to risk. Better the enemy y
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I'll give you the point on digital broadcast radio; a copy of the bitstream should be easy to record. I tend to forget about its existence, since I don't have a receiver.
2) It's fine for non-audiophiles. Digital radio is transmitted at 48-128kbit/s in the U.S.using lossy compression anyhow, and it would still outperform FM, which is
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You could get paid on the radio as well. Just not very well and you did better to use the radio to promote your music instead.
Which is something they should do with the internet radio people. The problem is that they're seeing spotify as a type of record sale or lease or rent. It isn't.
As to information gathering... clicks... fine, spotify is happy to provide that regardless.
As to it being harder to record things off spotify...
1. No it isn't. There are lots of software packages that will do it easily.
2. Who
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Most of the music uploads don't have a video component. They'll have some still image... which the compression nicely cuts down to the bandwidth required to transmit that image ONCE and not much more. So basically they already do that.
Sometime it is a music video but that is increasingly less common as MTV becomes less relevant.
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The CD is still very much alive, in my house anyway.
At this moment in time, I don't see myself ever paying for a digital music download, call me old fashioned but I need something tangible when it comes to music. (Though I do admit to downloading and paying for games through Steam and Good Old Games.)
To me, the CD represents excellent value for money, especially if I am paying around £10 UK for a piece of music I may well end up repeatedly enjoying over the next few decades.
Plus I never buy a bad CD b
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The CD is still very much alive, in my house anyway.
At this moment in time, I don't see myself ever paying for a digital music download, call me old fashioned but I need something tangible when it comes to music. (Though I do admit to downloading and paying for games through Steam and Good Old Games.)
To me, the CD represents excellent value for money, especially if I am paying around £10 UK for a piece of music I may well end up repeatedly enjoying over the next few decades.
Your CDs will not function a few decades from now.
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As to the CD being alive at your house, that hardly matters to the music industry unless others agree. And not enough do.
The CD is dead.
As to dodgy copies, if you download a FLAC file you're getting a Lossless copy of the disc. A full CD is about 200-300 MB using that compression.
My music needs to be digital regardless. If I bought a CD, I'd just have to digitize it to add it to my home music library. Drives cost about 50 USD per terabyte... so I can store about 4000 albums on a single 50 dollar 1 terabyte
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Your points are valid from your perspective, I cannot argue with them.
But from my perspective as a music lover and music consumer, I am extremely happy with the amount of good and interesting music that's out there for me to go and explore, and I am happy with the price it is offered to me at.
If anything, having no interest in the manufactured and mainstream crap means I have to search a bit harder to find what I want, that makes it all the more satisfying when I do find it.
To be honest, if they stopped mak
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As to you being happy with things, that does not address the sales statistics that herald the irrelevance of that position.
To "you" anything could be so. My comments were not about what you or any one person finds to be true or untrue.
My point was about an entire industry which is something beyond any individual's opinion.
In regards to sweeping statement I didn't say they were evil. And as to being bad... I said their business model has to be updated. Surely you must admit that they must change.
YOU might be
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What did you people [Universal] do before records? You existed and your people made money.
No they didn't. Media companies didn't exist before Records. Universal Music Group [wikipedia.org] didn't exist before 1934 (as Decca Records). Vinyl Records [wikipedia.org] were invented in 1881. Audio radio broadcasting [wikipedia.org] didn't take off until the 20's. Basically, the media companies were born from these technologies, therefore they did nothing before these technologies existed. Now the Internet has started pushing the media companies into irrelevance and they feel the noose closing around their necks. They're having trouble finding
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There were things like ascap though...
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ASCAP (founded 1914) was still created after the invention of the Vinyl Record. The assorted Media Foundations were built out of a necessity for managing and facilitating widespread distribution of a new technology that was too expensive for individuals to handle on their own without a way to spread the costs to a wider group (kinda like the insurance model, the wider you disburse your costs, the cheaper a product is for all involved). You first need the recording technologies in place for that to be a vi
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If the ads actually were worth two cents the record labels might be happy. Spotify is currently playing less than one tenth of a cent for song plays by free users, and the amount they pay is 70% of their total ad revenue. They pay about 10 times as much for plays by paying users (the number fluctuates between half a cent and a cent per play, because revenue and the number of plays changes from month to month) which is 70% of their subscription revenue.
Spotify really wants everybody to subscribe, and the lab
How is that "Free" if youtube pays for it? (Score:1)
Youtube (ok, Google) pays Universal for each view...
If you wonder, how much it is: GEMA (German MAFIAA) demanded 2 digit cent per view (!!!) which pissed off youtube to a point they said, nope, we better not play anything covered by GEMA in Germany at all.
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So youtube doesn't pay 2 cents per view.
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yes, so they can make 5 records a year for nostalgia instead of 2.
Give me a break.
I'm Torn. (Score:5, Interesting)
Whilst I support what Spotify do on principle (I havent pirated a single song since spotify came out, although I had already started buying my most loved stuff on iTunes) it does represent a pretty bad deal for artists. I've had a fair few thousand listens on spotify, not bad for a small band, but haven't seen more than a few measly cents off this.If this translated to, say, a hundred sales on iTunes, well it'd be somethng. There has to be a middle ground where artists can get paid (I'd love to write you guys music for a living), but lets music be free.
I ended up putting my stuff on torrents, beause screw it, if I'm not going to be paid, I might as well at least get some exposure out of it. But it'd be nice to sell a few albums.
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Even in the old days, an album could go double platinum and still be 'recouping' and so no check for the band. Perhaps a kickstarter like thing for a tour or to produce an album released to contributors early (with the biggest contributors credited somewhere).
I'm not sure what the answer is, but album sales were never a big source of income for musicians.
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Agreed. The complete answer hasn't really been worked out yet. Part of it is that the old guard is doing it's best to keep the new small bands that won't deal with the devil from getting ahead. After all, once that happens, the gravy train is over.
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Where in the hell did you get that idea?
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Might I suggest that part of what has you torn is that you're on some level expecting the world to provide you with a comfortable living (possibly supported by past decades where some artists could make a lot of money doing what they did) whilst simultaneously aware of the fact that forcing resrictions on how people you don't even know can use technology is wrong.
Nope. First up, he's not trying to force any restrictions on anyone -- he's just saying he's not really getting any meaningful profit off it, and he wishes he was.
Secondly, even if he took his material off Spotify, that wouldn't be "restrictions on [using] technology", but restrictions on using his intellectual property, which is his prerogative.
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Put your band name & URL in your /. sig. If it was there I'd listen - and I've known to pay for music.
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I used to, but we haven't really got much in the way of that these days since Myspace shat the bed and our singer moved to the US. I should probably do something about it.
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If this translated to, say, a hundred sales on iTunes, well it'd be somethng.
For all the ridicule /.ers like to heap on Apple fans, at least those Apple fans are usually willing to pay for stuff.
The amount of money I spend on iTunes for content is comparable to the money I paid for Apple hardware, and is already way more than what I had ever spent on CD/DVD/etc combined.
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The New Reality (Score:5, Insightful)
The old model for music distribution:
1. A song gets played on the radio.
2. A listener hears the song and would like to listen to it on demand, so they head down to the album store and buy a CD or record.
3. Listener pays for product, leaves happy! Music!
4. Distribution label PROFITS!!! (though cut has to go to artist, agent, CD/record production, etc.. ).
The new model for music distribution:
1. Listener hears artist's music on Youtube, can play on demand for free, can contribute to artist directly!
2. ??? - sound of crickets chirping -
Not seeing the need for big labels anymore myself. They are trying to coerce money out of a system that is rapidly realizing this new reality. Good luck with that!
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Last week I bought an interesting version of Bach's 'Well Tempered Clavier from the artist online. Could have ripped it, but I like Ms. Ishikaza's work and want to support her.
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The old model for the music industry:
1. A band/artist makes a record
2. The record label sells the record to the most people as possible
3. The record is played on radio
4. The artist plays live, and the advertisement from the record being played means people show up and buy tickets
The problems started when the record labels decided to turn the record from a advertising method into the commodity itself.
What about prices (Score:2)
They just really don't get it. (Score:1)
Let them pull their catalog and watch piracy go up even more. The days where media companies get to pretend there is a finite supply of their product is over. The market knows that it costs basically nothing to distribute now. They're attempting to charge more than when there was a need for a physical product which needed a the
If they're paying the contracted amount... (Score:2)
As long as Spotify is paying the licensed amount, Universal has no say in it.. until the next contract negotiations.
(I generally don't use ANY of these streaming services, btw.. because of the ads and limited amount of skips.. in THEORY I'd love to find a lot of new similar music to what I have, but I seem to usually already own the various things it thinks are similar to the bands I choose.)