7 ms·

Is the Era of Free Streaming Music Coming to an End?

47 points by tomkwok 10y ago

arcanus 10y ago
Is the Era of free email coming to an end? Is the Era of free GPS maps coming to an end? Is the Era of free social networking coming to an end? ...I see no reason music is any different. Nothing is free, but ads and other forms of monetization will win over subscription services.
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  What are some other forms of monetization besides ads?
  - Matt3o12_ 10y ago
    Market dominance can make you more money. This is why WhatsApp is worth $18 billion. This can often lead to ads but it can also be used to control a market.
    - adamnemecek 10y ago
      Market dominance isn't a monetization strategy.
- stephengillie 10y ago
  One root problem with the ad-funded model is it places an upper limit on the value of the content that you can access. The ads have to be worth more than the content costs. With freemium and one-time purchases, individuals can choose to pay more for more valuable content than can be funded by ads. Some content remains too expensive to fund with the ad model, such as major motion pictures. Numerous product placements and the ticket don't pay for the entire movie; even concessions profits are needed.
Unkechaug 10y ago
No, but the era of exclusive content is ramping up. While it's not exactly the same thing because it isn't free, you see the same behavior happening in the video streaming industry. Sign deals of exclusivity for the most popular music people will pay for, and get them hooked with a couple ad supported freebies up front.
mrep 10y ago
Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no" I think he is missing the key point of advertised streaming too. It's just plain old price discrimination. If there was no outlet for free advertised streaming, than most people would simply just pirate it. This way, they are at least making some money off of those people.
aston 10y ago
There are actually two big questions here that seem fairly tied together, but practically speaking are totally separate when it comes music online. 1. How much money should consumers/advertisers be charged for access or proximity to music? 2. How much money should artists, publishing companies, record labels and other rightsholders be paid for that access? Those two definitely seem related. As a theoretical floor on #2 the rightsholders have lots of leverage and so should be able to negotiate for fair (or better than fair) payouts from #1. As a theoretical ceiling on #2 you shouldn't be able to pay out more money than you make from #1. In reality, the actual floor on how much rightsholders get paid is only up for negotiation if the music comes as a result of interactive streaming from music provided by the rightsholders (read: Spotify). If it's internet radio, where the user doesn't choose what they hear (non-interactive, read: Pandora) the rate is set by Congress regardless of the business income or rightsholder desires. And if it's user-generated content subject to the DMCA (read: YouTube) there's no clear need to pay anything to the rightsholders (see Grooveshark). So, there are tons of arguments about #2. As far as #1 goes, there's never been a music company that got to million-user scale and was long-term profitable, so clearly companies (and their investors) are willing to send more money out the door than they make. Fixed-rate subscriptions have a perverse property that your best users by engagement metrics are your worst users financially--they cost you the most with all that listening. Advertisement-based monetization matches consumption to revenue, which is nice, but as Pandora and Spotify will both attest, the revenue from ads thus far is way short of what they or the rightsholders would like. So what to do? Talk about it in the press and see if you can get public outcry to force someone to pay your company more?
- gcr 10y ago
  How could we make #2 much, much higher than #1? It sounds implausible, but I like the idea of some kind of subsidized access to music.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    1. Government grants program 2. Basic income
monkmartinez 10y ago
No such thing as a free lunch :) However, as long as FM radio is still a thing... "free streaming" music is not going to end.
- laurencei 10y ago
  But FM radio stations are supported by Ads that the radio stations play to make the money - so whilst it is "free" - it is through the use of Ads.
bambax 10y ago
> Before Napster, to hear whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, you had to pay for it. What?? Before Napster, we made tapes. I still have tons of them. We exchanged tapes and copied them, and also we recorded the radio. It was exactly like Napster, only much slower and complicated -- and also, in a way, nicer, because putting a tape together was a form of expression. I don't think free streaming can go away without being immediately replaced by increased piracy, but we'll see.
- tehrei 10y ago
  No, see, home-taping was illegal and in the physical world you can't break the law as easily as in the lawless wasteland that is the internet.
  - karmajunkie 10y ago
    Home taping on analog media was not illegal. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act
    - vonklaus 10y ago
      home taping killed music and it was illegal[0] [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music
      - karmajunkie 10y ago
        Media campaign vs actual law.
        NamTaf 10y ago
        More specifically, differing law in different countries.
        10y ago
anexprogrammer 10y ago
> Before Napster, to hear whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, you had to pay for it Huh? "Home Taping is Killing Music" Was the slogan on every LP and tape, and played before every film, in the late 70s and 80s. It wasn't and it didn't. We had crappy ghetto blasters with 2x speed twin tape decks from every Japanese manufacturer designed for tape copying (not that anyone in their right mind copied anything at fast speed). We'd record tracks off the Rock Show on the radio and trade tapes in the playground. We'd borrow LPs to tape, regularly. 95% of my music was on copied tape. None of us could afford to buy all the vinyl we wanted. Then CD burners came along and copying was so much easier - long before Napster. Just don't let the screensaver or print job kick in if you were on a Windows PC as it'd wreck the burn. 2 generations have been used to having free music, despite what the streamers may wish I doubt YT Red etc will make much of a dent. I'd imagine most will go back to torrents, or step up from CD copying and trade libraries with friends. Those likely to pay are those with Sonos or other home streaming hifi. If streaming becomes difficult to access there'll be a YIFY/Popcorn Time type site along any moment. TL;DR Does the headline end with a question? The answer is no.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  > Those likely to pay are those with Sonos or other home streaming hifi. To be more specific, geriatric and upper middle class. edit: I actually think that music torrenting is dying because habitual torrenters all have all of the music that they want. The next logical step is to spend $20 on a hard drive and give that entire collection to a friend. Or $80 if you're a fiend for flacs.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    I'm not in the acquire a lot of new music demographic any longer, but I guess I assume that people must trade their music collections around. I sure would have in college with today's technology. I get that a lot of people use streaming these days but when you can trade around a few thousand songs basically for free..
- selfsimilar 10y ago
  But you still paid for it, at least a little bit. Blank media was taxed against piracy with the 'Private copying levy'[1]. It wasn't perfect (and could never be) since they simply tied payouts to chart position, but at least the artists still got _something_ when copies were made. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
haywirez 10y ago
I think we are about to enter a post-recording era relatively soon. Recordings are not native to the medium we use to interact with music anymore. It's no surprise that engagement levels are dropping together with the tolerated prices in the market (selling files/access to files containing recordings). The way to upset and bury the current industry will be to create tools that let us move past this 20th century notion of music consumption - imagine for example hosted song projects with interactivity baked in. The next 10 years will be super interesting.
- zer00eyz 10y ago
  I do agree with your statement about "hosted song projects with interactivity baked in" but I don't think that will displace recordings. I don't think we are headed to a post-recoring era. I think we are entering an era of MORE recording than ever. What used to take a studio, and a bunch of musicians, is now something you can do with a macbook, and a solid mic. The combination of social media (Facebook, twitter, instagram) and distribution platforms (youtube and soundcloud) not only lets one directly distribute but promote, and interact. For a lot of people in the US this means that "startup costs" to be a recording artist today are negligible. On the consumption side, how often do you listen to music while engaged in a visual or physical task? Going for a run, commuting to work, washing the dishes, writing code... all settings where recorded music without interaction is something thats easy to consume.
davidgerard 10y ago
This is wishful thinking that the genie can be put back in the bottle, that copying will become harder and that the good times will return to the major record industry.
wanderr 10y ago
Former Grooveshark employee here so my opinion might be highly biased but I believe that the genie of free music is out of the bottle and there is no putting it back in, whether that is fair or not, it's just reality. I don't pretend that Grooveshark had anything to do with that change, we recognized that it had already happened and tried to find a way forward for the industry. Older people, especially those with money, will certainly pay for music either by buying the music or paying for subscription services or both, and I don't see that changing but kids, the ones who I know at least, won't pay for music they can get for free, and they all know how to get it for free. Streaming services try to bring that behavior into the light and at least try to monetize it, but eliminating free streaming is only going to drive them back to the shadows. I really think that efforts to stop people from listening to music for free will be about as effective as prohibition or the war on drugs.
- thatusertwo 10y ago
  I'm in my thirties, when I was younger I was certainly more willing to put in the effort to find the music I wanted for free. At the time it seemed much easier to find, for me. Now I pay 10 month for spotify and my effort is much less, but so is my interest.
  - coroutines 10y ago
    I agree - it's too much effort to be young :(
  - wanderr 10y ago
    Me too, actually...but I believe we are a minority, we're certainly not going to sustain the music industry.
    - vonklaus 10y ago
      im broke so i don't pay, currently using 3mo apple music subscription. that said even when i get a mediocre salary i would pay 9.99 for apple music (or spotify). at most states minimum wage this is ~1 hour a month. since the movie/media companies either have shit teir stresming (hulu, hbo go) i still watch on primewire, but i could imagine with a halfway decent salary for $100 i could have internet, netflix, hbo go, anytging on itunes, prime, and some money left over for an online rental or 2, that strikes me as a good deal. sure i could torrent, see if the seed health is decent, check if commenters gave positive feedback, and then store a 500mb - 2gb file. but a la carte streaming is actually much better. cable just needs to die but it wont when the internet & media companies enjoy 2 monopolies & gov subsidies
Animats 10y ago
The end of pay streaming music may be coming to an end. The commercial music streaming industry generates less US revenue than vinyl. What would kill streaming music? A court decision against Google that made them take down all pirated music, or pay vast amounts to the music industry. As long as most music is on Youtube, not much else matters.
tunesmith 10y ago
The whole things was a technical example of moral hazard, and, if you believe moral hazard is wrong, an actual cultural failure. Using a business model that wasn't self-sufficient - whether VC money, or loss-leader money, or similar - meant that easy streaming stoked a demand and a sense of entitlement in the consumer. Then later, that sense of demand was used as justification to say "Welp, I guess the genie is out of the bottle" and then ask for songwriting organizations to agree to shit fees. Moral hazard - a risky action was took, when the actual risk was borne by those (the songwriters) other than the people taking the action (Spotify etc). It's unethical. Saying so is not a failure to accept reality, of course it happened, but it doesn't make it any more ethical. It was a cultural failure and there's a huge counterfactual that is out there that people cannot easily accept - the large amounts of quality, life-changing music that went unwritten.
toast0 10y ago
Even in the UK where you need to pay to watch over the air TV, FM radio is free and has music. Choices are limited, and advertisements are invasive, but it provides a baseline experience.
meeper16 10y ago
I remember it beginning with a company called SeeqPod, those were the days!
zer00eyz 10y ago
As someone who used to run fan clubs, and merchandise stores on line for artists I have a fairly different take on this. Music as an item you buy is DEAD. It has been dying since Napster, and no amount of copy right law, or services is going to put that genie back in the bottle. The tools available to artist now, make it even easier to "make" music, you don't need a full studio any more. Artists are even starting to think this way, watch Diplo and & Skrillex on Charley Rose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb85hwOotts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb85hwOotts How then, does a musiscian make money? Licensing, Concerts, t-shirts and merchandise, an artist is now a brand. Its a brand that has the ability to endorse and enhance other brands. Take a "fan club package", Membership, great seats to a show, meet and greet and photo. All in its going to be between 800-2000 for 3 minutes with a top tier artist, a photo and a hand full of tchotchkes. Heck there are artists that even get paid to show up and have drinks: http://www.gq.com/story/how-celebs-get-paid-for-club-appearances http://www.gq.com/story/how-celebs-get-paid-for-club-appeara... Here is the grim irony of all of this, the music industry did it to itself. Long before "digital" was a thing touring and t-shirts was how an artist made real money. A record labels creative accounting practices would likely leave an artist with little to no cash from millions in sales. Now that you don't need a label per-se to get distribution, and it isn't where your going to make money anyway, there is less incentive to go that route at all. How many hip hop acts have become successful off of pushing out mixtape at a steady clip? Google will provide you a rather extensive list from several venues.
- petra 10y ago
  >> The tools available to artist now, make it even easier to "make" music, you don't need a full studio any more. True for electronic music ,etc - but do you see it being true for rock/acoustic/etc ?
  - zer00eyz 10y ago
    I have a good friend that does exactly this, he very much makes "modern folk music", lots of acoustic guitar. Regardless of what you think of Kesha, she went into a bathroom and recorded a Bob Dylan cover. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNCEV7ZSNFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNCEV7ZSNFo http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/amnesty-international-unveils-bob-dylan-tribute-in-honor-of-its-50th-anniversary-20111210#ixzz1gFw7oqrd http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/amnesty-international...
petra 10y ago
One possibility: maybe having a streaming account would become luxury, a status symbol ? teens "love" that shit. Especially now with music discovery services, which greatly increase exposure to variety of music and make it harder to piracy alternatives to compete. Or does anybody see a piracy based service that compete with spotify on selection, and easy of use ? how would such service look, technically ?
xivzgrev 10y ago
"A perpetual free option doesn’t make for a viable music industry" People have been trained for almost 100 years (since radio) that music is free but ad supported via radio. So thats bunk. The industry is just pissed people wont buy $20 cds anymore. Suddenly people had another option for on demand music with napster. Here we are 17 years later and the industry still hasnt gotten over it. I guess why shouldnt they - easiest money ever. But time to put big boy pants back on. I think ultimately key music services are going to collude or move in lockstep to increase ad frequency. And frankly i think its smart to put the hottest stuff behind a paywall / available only on subscription. Record labels are essentiallly caught in this trap where you can go exclusive and reach a small percent of audience or dont be exclusive and reach everyone. An artist could go exclusive behind everyones paywall, now that would be interesting. Pandora youtube spotify whatever - listen to taylor swift new album now thru subscribing.

47 points by tomkwok 10y ago

Is the Era of free email coming to an end? Is the Era of free GPS maps coming to an end? Is the Era of free social networking coming to an end? ...I see no reason music is any different. Nothing is free, but ads and other forms of monetization will win over subscription services.

adamnemecek 10y ago
What are some other forms of monetization besides ads?
- Matt3o12_ 10y ago
  Market dominance can make you more money. This is why WhatsApp is worth $18 billion. This can often lead to ads but it can also be used to control a market.
  - adamnemecek 10y ago
    Market dominance isn't a monetization strategy.
stephengillie 10y ago
One root problem with the ad-funded model is it places an upper limit on the value of the content that you can access. The ads have to be worth more than the content costs. With freemium and one-time purchases, individuals can choose to pay more for more valuable content than can be funded by ads. Some content remains too expensive to fund with the ad model, such as major motion pictures. Numerous product placements and the ticket don't pay for the entire movie; even concessions profits are needed.

Unkechaug 10y ago

No, but the era of exclusive content is ramping up. While it's not exactly the same thing because it isn't free, you see the same behavior happening in the video streaming industry. Sign deals of exclusivity for the most popular music people will pay for, and get them hooked with a couple ad supported freebies up front.

mrep 10y ago

Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no" I think he is missing the key point of advertised streaming too. It's just plain old price discrimination. If there was no outlet for free advertised streaming, than most people would simply just pirate it. This way, they are at least making some money off of those people.

aston 10y ago

There are actually two big questions here that seem fairly tied together, but practically speaking are totally separate when it comes music online. 1. How much money should consumers/advertisers be charged for access or proximity to music? 2. How much money should artists, publishing companies, record labels and other rightsholders be paid for that access? Those two definitely seem related. As a theoretical floor on #2 the rightsholders have lots of leverage and so should be able to negotiate for fair (or better than fair) payouts from #1. As a theoretical ceiling on #2 you shouldn't be able to pay out more money than you make from #1. In reality, the actual floor on how much rightsholders get paid is only up for negotiation if the music comes as a result of interactive streaming from music provided by the rightsholders (read: Spotify). If it's internet radio, where the user doesn't choose what they hear (non-interactive, read: Pandora) the rate is set by Congress regardless of the business income or rightsholder desires. And if it's user-generated content subject to the DMCA (read: YouTube) there's no clear need to pay anything to the rightsholders (see Grooveshark). So, there are tons of arguments about #2. As far as #1 goes, there's never been a music company that got to million-user scale and was long-term profitable, so clearly companies (and their investors) are willing to send more money out the door than they make. Fixed-rate subscriptions have a perverse property that your best users by engagement metrics are your worst users financially--they cost you the most with all that listening. Advertisement-based monetization matches consumption to revenue, which is nice, but as Pandora and Spotify will both attest, the revenue from ads thus far is way short of what they or the rightsholders would like. So what to do? Talk about it in the press and see if you can get public outcry to force someone to pay your company more?

gcr 10y ago
How could we make #2 much, much higher than #1? It sounds implausible, but I like the idea of some kind of subsidized access to music.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  1. Government grants program 2. Basic income

monkmartinez 10y ago

No such thing as a free lunch :) However, as long as FM radio is still a thing... "free streaming" music is not going to end.

laurencei 10y ago
But FM radio stations are supported by Ads that the radio stations play to make the money - so whilst it is "free" - it is through the use of Ads.

bambax 10y ago

> Before Napster, to hear whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, you had to pay for it. What?? Before Napster, we made tapes. I still have tons of them. We exchanged tapes and copied them, and also we recorded the radio. It was exactly like Napster, only much slower and complicated -- and also, in a way, nicer, because putting a tape together was a form of expression. I don't think free streaming can go away without being immediately replaced by increased piracy, but we'll see.

tehrei 10y ago
No, see, home-taping was illegal and in the physical world you can't break the law as easily as in the lawless wasteland that is the internet.
- karmajunkie 10y ago
  Home taping on analog media was not illegal. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    home taping killed music and it was illegal[0] [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music
    - karmajunkie 10y ago
      Media campaign vs actual law.
      - NamTaf 10y ago
        More specifically, differing law in different countries.
        10y ago

anexprogrammer 10y ago

> Before Napster, to hear whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, you had to pay for it Huh? "Home Taping is Killing Music" Was the slogan on every LP and tape, and played before every film, in the late 70s and 80s. It wasn't and it didn't. We had crappy ghetto blasters with 2x speed twin tape decks from every Japanese manufacturer designed for tape copying (not that anyone in their right mind copied anything at fast speed). We'd record tracks off the Rock Show on the radio and trade tapes in the playground. We'd borrow LPs to tape, regularly. 95% of my music was on copied tape. None of us could afford to buy all the vinyl we wanted. Then CD burners came along and copying was so much easier - long before Napster. Just don't let the screensaver or print job kick in if you were on a Windows PC as it'd wreck the burn. 2 generations have been used to having free music, despite what the streamers may wish I doubt YT Red etc will make much of a dent. I'd imagine most will go back to torrents, or step up from CD copying and trade libraries with friends. Those likely to pay are those with Sonos or other home streaming hifi. If streaming becomes difficult to access there'll be a YIFY/Popcorn Time type site along any moment. TL;DR Does the headline end with a question? The answer is no.

pessimizer 10y ago
> Those likely to pay are those with Sonos or other home streaming hifi. To be more specific, geriatric and upper middle class. edit: I actually think that music torrenting is dying because habitual torrenters all have all of the music that they want. The next logical step is to spend $20 on a hard drive and give that entire collection to a friend. Or $80 if you're a fiend for flacs.
- ghaff 10y ago
  I'm not in the acquire a lot of new music demographic any longer, but I guess I assume that people must trade their music collections around. I sure would have in college with today's technology. I get that a lot of people use streaming these days but when you can trade around a few thousand songs basically for free..
selfsimilar 10y ago
But you still paid for it, at least a little bit. Blank media was taxed against piracy with the 'Private copying levy'[1]. It wasn't perfect (and could never be) since they simply tied payouts to chart position, but at least the artists still got _something_ when copies were made. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy

haywirez 10y ago

I think we are about to enter a post-recording era relatively soon. Recordings are not native to the medium we use to interact with music anymore. It's no surprise that engagement levels are dropping together with the tolerated prices in the market (selling files/access to files containing recordings). The way to upset and bury the current industry will be to create tools that let us move past this 20th century notion of music consumption - imagine for example hosted song projects with interactivity baked in. The next 10 years will be super interesting.

zer00eyz 10y ago
I do agree with your statement about "hosted song projects with interactivity baked in" but I don't think that will displace recordings. I don't think we are headed to a post-recoring era. I think we are entering an era of MORE recording than ever. What used to take a studio, and a bunch of musicians, is now something you can do with a macbook, and a solid mic. The combination of social media (Facebook, twitter, instagram) and distribution platforms (youtube and soundcloud) not only lets one directly distribute but promote, and interact. For a lot of people in the US this means that "startup costs" to be a recording artist today are negligible. On the consumption side, how often do you listen to music while engaged in a visual or physical task? Going for a run, commuting to work, washing the dishes, writing code... all settings where recorded music without interaction is something thats easy to consume.

davidgerard 10y ago

This is wishful thinking that the genie can be put back in the bottle, that copying will become harder and that the good times will return to the major record industry.

wanderr 10y ago

Former Grooveshark employee here so my opinion might be highly biased but I believe that the genie of free music is out of the bottle and there is no putting it back in, whether that is fair or not, it's just reality. I don't pretend that Grooveshark had anything to do with that change, we recognized that it had already happened and tried to find a way forward for the industry. Older people, especially those with money, will certainly pay for music either by buying the music or paying for subscription services or both, and I don't see that changing but kids, the ones who I know at least, won't pay for music they can get for free, and they all know how to get it for free. Streaming services try to bring that behavior into the light and at least try to monetize it, but eliminating free streaming is only going to drive them back to the shadows. I really think that efforts to stop people from listening to music for free will be about as effective as prohibition or the war on drugs.

thatusertwo 10y ago
I'm in my thirties, when I was younger I was certainly more willing to put in the effort to find the music I wanted for free. At the time it seemed much easier to find, for me. Now I pay 10 month for spotify and my effort is much less, but so is my interest.
- coroutines 10y ago
  I agree - it's too much effort to be young :(
- wanderr 10y ago
  Me too, actually...but I believe we are a minority, we're certainly not going to sustain the music industry.
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    im broke so i don't pay, currently using 3mo apple music subscription. that said even when i get a mediocre salary i would pay 9.99 for apple music (or spotify). at most states minimum wage this is ~1 hour a month. since the movie/media companies either have shit teir stresming (hulu, hbo go) i still watch on primewire, but i could imagine with a halfway decent salary for $100 i could have internet, netflix, hbo go, anytging on itunes, prime, and some money left over for an online rental or 2, that strikes me as a good deal. sure i could torrent, see if the seed health is decent, check if commenters gave positive feedback, and then store a 500mb - 2gb file. but a la carte streaming is actually much better. cable just needs to die but it wont when the internet & media companies enjoy 2 monopolies & gov subsidies

Animats 10y ago

The end of pay streaming music may be coming to an end. The commercial music streaming industry generates less US revenue than vinyl. What would kill streaming music? A court decision against Google that made them take down all pirated music, or pay vast amounts to the music industry. As long as most music is on Youtube, not much else matters.

tunesmith 10y ago

The whole things was a technical example of moral hazard, and, if you believe moral hazard is wrong, an actual cultural failure. Using a business model that wasn't self-sufficient - whether VC money, or loss-leader money, or similar - meant that easy streaming stoked a demand and a sense of entitlement in the consumer. Then later, that sense of demand was used as justification to say "Welp, I guess the genie is out of the bottle" and then ask for songwriting organizations to agree to shit fees. Moral hazard - a risky action was took, when the actual risk was borne by those (the songwriters) other than the people taking the action (Spotify etc). It's unethical. Saying so is not a failure to accept reality, of course it happened, but it doesn't make it any more ethical. It was a cultural failure and there's a huge counterfactual that is out there that people cannot easily accept - the large amounts of quality, life-changing music that went unwritten.

toast0 10y ago

Even in the UK where you need to pay to watch over the air TV, FM radio is free and has music. Choices are limited, and advertisements are invasive, but it provides a baseline experience.

meeper16 10y ago

I remember it beginning with a company called SeeqPod, those were the days!

zer00eyz 10y ago

As someone who used to run fan clubs, and merchandise stores on line for artists I have a fairly different take on this. Music as an item you buy is DEAD. It has been dying since Napster, and no amount of copy right law, or services is going to put that genie back in the bottle. The tools available to artist now, make it even easier to "make" music, you don't need a full studio any more. Artists are even starting to think this way, watch Diplo and & Skrillex on Charley Rose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb85hwOotts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb85hwOotts How then, does a musiscian make money? Licensing, Concerts, t-shirts and merchandise, an artist is now a brand. Its a brand that has the ability to endorse and enhance other brands. Take a "fan club package", Membership, great seats to a show, meet and greet and photo. All in its going to be between 800-2000 for 3 minutes with a top tier artist, a photo and a hand full of tchotchkes. Heck there are artists that even get paid to show up and have drinks: http://www.gq.com/story/how-celebs-get-paid-for-club-appearances http://www.gq.com/story/how-celebs-get-paid-for-club-appeara... Here is the grim irony of all of this, the music industry did it to itself. Long before "digital" was a thing touring and t-shirts was how an artist made real money. A record labels creative accounting practices would likely leave an artist with little to no cash from millions in sales. Now that you don't need a label per-se to get distribution, and it isn't where your going to make money anyway, there is less incentive to go that route at all. How many hip hop acts have become successful off of pushing out mixtape at a steady clip? Google will provide you a rather extensive list from several venues.

petra 10y ago
>> The tools available to artist now, make it even easier to "make" music, you don't need a full studio any more. True for electronic music ,etc - but do you see it being true for rock/acoustic/etc ?
- zer00eyz 10y ago
  I have a good friend that does exactly this, he very much makes "modern folk music", lots of acoustic guitar. Regardless of what you think of Kesha, she went into a bathroom and recorded a Bob Dylan cover. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNCEV7ZSNFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNCEV7ZSNFo http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/amnesty-international-unveils-bob-dylan-tribute-in-honor-of-its-50th-anniversary-20111210#ixzz1gFw7oqrd http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/amnesty-international...

petra 10y ago

One possibility: maybe having a streaming account would become luxury, a status symbol ? teens "love" that shit. Especially now with music discovery services, which greatly increase exposure to variety of music and make it harder to piracy alternatives to compete. Or does anybody see a piracy based service that compete with spotify on selection, and easy of use ? how would such service look, technically ?

xivzgrev 10y ago

"A perpetual free option doesn’t make for a viable music industry" People have been trained for almost 100 years (since radio) that music is free but ad supported via radio. So thats bunk. The industry is just pissed people wont buy $20 cds anymore. Suddenly people had another option for on demand music with napster. Here we are 17 years later and the industry still hasnt gotten over it. I guess why shouldnt they - easiest money ever. But time to put big boy pants back on. I think ultimately key music services are going to collude or move in lockstep to increase ad frequency. And frankly i think its smart to put the hottest stuff behind a paywall / available only on subscription. Record labels are essentiallly caught in this trap where you can go exclusive and reach a small percent of audience or dont be exclusive and reach everyone. An artist could go exclusive behind everyones paywall, now that would be interesting. Pandora youtube spotify whatever - listen to taylor swift new album now thru subscribing.