What’s the takeaway from Taylor Swift’s decision to take her songs off Spotify? What did you learn and what did the public learn?
The public probably learned there’s something called Spotify, and that it’s not Pandora. What it has highlighted for us is we need to do a better job explaining to artists how streaming benefits them. The point that’s been lost is that Spotify’s the fastest-growing revenue source the industry has. There are many artists to whom, through the labels, we’re paying out millions a year already. Those check sizes will just keep increasing. I’m certain that if we can get the billion-people-plus that are consuming music online and move them into a model like Spotify, the industry would be considerably bigger than it is today.
A billion seems like a utopian number.
I think people discount piracy. We’ve grown accustomed to it, so [we’re] not really sure what we can do about it. But there’s a billion people doing it. If they contribute to a legal service of any kind, that’s a huge win. I’m not saying that we’re going to be the only ones, but we’re by far the largest subscription service, we’re probably as large as all of the others combined, so do I care about taking market share from [other subscription services] or taking market share from the billion people that are currently not contributing but still consuming music? We are in a growing industry, not really an industry where we’re fighting for market share. I think people discount piracy.
Going back to Taylor Swift’s decision, where does the discussion stand about allowing artists or labels to choose what material is available on what tier of service at Spotify?
Well, right now we don’t allow that. There’s a lot of other places where you can access that music for free, so our view is the only thing that happens by not being in the free service is that the consumer then has to go to another service to get the song, and they will. If they stay on the [Spotify] free service there’s a lot more likelihood that the consumer ends up becoming a paying subscriber, thereby generating more revenue. And then on top of that we’re paying a considerable amount every single time someone does play a song, whether it’s on the free tier or the paid tier. It’s something that we keep on discussing internally but right now our stance is the same as it has been before.
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How Streaming Benefits Them...by further encouraging a "music is free" culture. Why buy an album on iTunes when you can stream an artist's entire discography for FREE via Spotify?
Who loses? The MUSIC MAKERS - artists, songwriters and producers who devote their lives to creating the soundtracks to life and get paid virtually NOTHING compared to what they MAKE for their labels.
Now playing:
D’Angelo & The Vanguard - "Till It's Done (Tutu)"
Mess @ people still trying to come for Spotify. Music streaming has won, get over it.
This. The only problem is it's still on its early stages, but once there are more people streaming songs via on-demand services than buying them, and artists start making as much from Streaming as they used to make from digital retailers, people will finally realize Streaming is not the enemy they made up on their minds.
why when being uninformed you allow yourself to criticize the service?
You can not stream the music for free on any device you have, you need to pay to be able to do that.
Secondly, although it seems to be a free service if you yourself won't decide to be a paying subscriber,
the case is that, then you have advertisement interrupting your playlist, so money is still in the making.
Just in a different way. God knows how many other things you're unaware of. Next time try to think of all the aspects and do research.
Yeah, I deleted Spotify when Taylor took her stuff away.
Anyway, I really really want to get a premium account but I'll wait a bit because the payement options are a bit limited in my country still. Spotify is new here.
It's an amazing service and it will improve even more when more people start subscribing to it.
why would people stream songs and waste their precious bandwidth... just download the freakin song anyhow
If you stream it once it's basically downloaded. You just have to be online to play it. And if you save it to offline play you don't even have to be online at all.
This is what the artists don't seem to get. Spotify is still relatively small. For some reason they only look at the current bottom line.
their greed Spotify is such a great service for people who love to listen to music and do it the right way. I guess that's why we can never have nice things.
Anyway, I really really want to get a premium account but I'll wait a bit because the payement options are a bit limited in my country still. Spotify is new here.
It's an amazing service and it will improve even more when more people start subscribing to it.
What? Would you use a streaming service that doesn't have your fave's music? It's not like it's not understandable
Ehhhh. Spotify clearly has to work on its compensation model. As far as streaming services go, they're among the worst in that department and considering they're essentially the pioneers of this whole streaming movement, they're setting a pretty poor standard for what's considered acceptable.
The number of times an artist has to be streamed on the service to even make the equivalent of a living wage is ludicrous.
See:
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I do think streaming is the future and artists like Taylor are living in the past, but it's hard to begrudge them for taking a stand against this.
Spotify is such a great service for people who love to listen to music and do it the right way. I guess that's why we can never have nice things.