9 ms·

This is the same problem Netflix & Amazon have been successful in combating. The answer is to become a content owner by competing with the big labels directly.

This is the same problem Netflix & Amazon have been successful in combating. The answer is to become a content owner by competing with the big labels directly. All Spotify needs to push the big labels back on their heels is to sign a few top 40 artists of their own. I might be wrong but I remember reading something like 90%+ of streams on music services are of songs currently on the charts. Capture the popular culture like Netflix has and the labels will start rolling over on rates.

nunez 9y ago
It’s really not though because music is a loss leader for amazon, apple and google, but it is spotify’s entire business. The only other major competitors out there are either in major cahoots with the big 3 (tidal, pandora) or gone (soundcloud, grooveshark, rdio). Netflix has this problem too but they “solved” it by making their own content. Amazon are Google are doing the same thing. That’s the direction I see Spotify going, though I wonder why Apple hasn’t done this yet.
- nkozyra 9y ago
  I'm confused. I think you're saying the same thing as the post you're replying to. The direction would be to own (or "create") the content. In other words, Justin Timberlake or someone with equal clout moves from Sony to Spotify Records (for lack of a better name).
  - notatoad 9y ago
    The problem with that is it creates a war for exclusives. If their competitors start doing the same thing, spotify will just end up losing a lot of their content. and personally, unless spotify continues to have the vast majority of the music i want to listen to, i won't continue being a subscriber.
    - wolco 9y ago
      But if they sign the top 30 and you listen to that kind of music you will have to subscribe. Netflicks is creating there own content which would mean spotify would need to create new bands instead of sign existing ones which most likely would fail because they are all under contract.
- jon-wood 9y ago
  It wouldn’t surprise me if Apple not being in that game yet is because of their long standing agreement with Apple Records (the Beatle’s label), who challenged their trademark a while back when they started selling music. I suspect getting into directly signing artists would breach whatever agreement was made and leave Apple open to a huge trademark suit.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Apple does directly sign non-label artists to exclusive deals with Apple Music, but so far that's mostly established artists, they haven't put money into discovering and developing artists.
  - tzahola 9y ago
    "In 1978, Apple Records filed suit against Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) for trademark infringement. The suit was settled in 1981 with the payment of $80,000 to Apple Corps. As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed to stay out of the music business. A dispute subsequently arose in 1989 when Apple Corps sued, alleging that Apple Computer's machines' ability to play back MIDI music was a violation of the 1981 settlement agreement. In 1991 another settlement, of around $26.5 million, was reached.[54][55] In September 2003, Apple Computer was again sued by Apple Corps, this time for introducing the iTunes Music Store and the iPod, which Apple Corps asserted was a violation of Apple's agreement not to distribute music. The trial opened on 29 March 2006 in the UK,[56] and in a judgement issued on 8 May 2006, Apple Corps lost the case." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps#Apple_Corps_v._Apple_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps#Apple_Corps_v._App...
- joemi 9y ago
  > or gone (soundcloud, grooveshark, rdio) I can't speak for grooveshark or rdio, but as far as I know soundcloud still exists. I just added a song there and listened to some other stuff a week ago. Did I miss something?
  - rozenmd 9y ago
    They fired a fair number of developers in San Francisco, Berlin, shut offices etc - but are still running the servers AFAIK.
  - JonFish85 9y ago
    Soundcloud exists, but is likely on life support[1]. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14990911 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14990911
- fragsworth 9y ago
  Music is quite a bit different, in that people spend lots of time curating their own playlists and they listen to the same songs repeatedly. It is incredibly annoying to have songs that you want in your playlists but can't get, EVEN if you pay for multiple services. Making their own content for video has the advantage that most people are OK with opening a new browser tab or an app to watch a specific movie or show. With music, however, you don't want to run multiple conflicting music players, especially when they don't sync up playlists and seamlessly work together. I wonder how that will pan out. It's a significant difference.
  - notatoad 9y ago
    Yes, i don't think the original content strategy will work out for streaming sites the way it has for netflix and amazon. I'm not willing to open one app to listen to one album and then another app to listen to a different album. I'll use the service that has all the music i want to listen to. Whether that's piracy or youtube playlists or spotify. If any streaming service starts getting too many exclusives, it's going to just kill the entire streaming market. From my perspective, all the streaming services should be working together to create a healthy marketplace for independent music, and providing every opportunity they can for musicians to avoid signing a big-four contract. If Warner and Sony, and UMG get their act together and create a joint venture streaming service that's the exclusive host of the content they own, Spotify, Google Music, and Apple Music are screwed.
    - rvshchwl 9y ago
      That is basically what happened with Hulu. The service is owned by the major content providers, such as Fox and CBS, and all of the televised content is almost completely exclusive on Hulu now, as opposed to being on Netflix. As more and more shows started to get pulled from Netflix, Netflix had to rely on original shows to make sure that they have a full catalog of streaming content. They paid over $6 billion dollars in creating new shows for 2017. Unfortunately for music, the exclusivity has started to show up in some cases. Artists that own the Tidal service don't allow any of their music on competing services, and Apple has been signing contracts with musicians to have new content show up on their service several months in advance before it does on other services (like Jay Z and Kanye).
- kingraoul3 9y ago
  What about iHeart? They do own half the physical radio stations in the country which is still how people find new music, you know.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > They do own half the physical radio stations in the country which is still how people find new music, you know. IME, lots of people find new music by genre/mood/etc. curated or “like this song/artist” algorithmic stations in streaming services, not terrestrial radio.
    - kingraoul3 9y ago
      That is not supported by the data. The lions share of new music discovery is still done via terrestrial radio, and the brand identification people have with their favorite stations is crazy high
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        Where is the data showing this?
        kingraoul3 9y ago
        https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/radio-still-beats-digital-music-discovery/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/radio-still-beats-digit...
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        So, here's a newer piece, with opposing results: https://musicbiz.org/news/music-bizloop-study-millennials-turn-radio-embrace-streaming/ https://musicbiz.org/news/music-bizloop-study-millennials-tu... But it looks like the data from other recent sources are mixed, with different surveys posting widely varying data, consistent in the direction of change from radio to streaming) but not what the current leading discovery sources are or even the relative placement of streaming vs. radio.
- remir 9y ago
  Apparently Apple is gearing up to create their own video content.
geodel 9y ago
Netflix was/is competing with exclusive products like expensive cable channels or established studios' productions which are not available on vehicle radio, youtube and other free avenues. So Netflix is able to get comparable reach to cable TV. For music there are far more avenues to listen for free and unlimited times with some ads.
BinaryIdiot 9y ago
> This is the same problem Netflix & Amazon have been successful in combating. The answer is to become a content owner by competing with the big labels directly. > All Spotify needs to push the big labels back on their heels is to sign a few top 40 artists of their own No way that's going to work. Music is VASTLY different from video. In video it takes more time and resources to produce each one and replays are rare. In music everything is super cheap to produce and replays are off the chart. If Spotify became their own label and signed 100 of the top artists, their old songs are STILL with the previous label and will likely never leave. Spotify still NEEDS those songs or it's SOL.
- komali2 9y ago
  Alternatively, as less people stop listening to the radio, songs from the 70's, 80's, 90's, and eventually the early 2000's will need a venue to be played on. If less people listen to the radio, AND less people buy music directly through itunes or whatever, the only option the big 3 will have is to work with streaming services.
- hobofan 9y ago
  > If Spotify became their own label and signed 100 of the top artists, their old songs are STILL with the previous label and will likely never leave. Spotify still NEEDS those songs or it's SOL. As I pointed out in a sibling comment, I think Netflix actually has the same problem. There is a significant presence of long-running shows that people love to watch on Netflix: Friends, Breaking Bad, Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother, etc.. A big favorite "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" just left the catalog - presumably due to the acquisition of FX by Disney - and "Archer" will likely soon follow for the same reason. A lot of those are not new and people still watch them (either to catch up on a missed cult hit or to rewatch their favorites), and the will continue to do so for the next 10-20 years. As long as that's the case Netflix also has to continue to make deals with the existing rights holders or substantially shift their core offering.
  - BinaryIdiot 9y ago
    > As I pointed out in a sibling comment, I think Netflix actually has the same problem. There is a significant presence of long-running shows that people love to watch on Netflix: Friends, Breaking Bad, Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother, etc.. Is that really true though? As video content gets older it usually gets watched less, becomes cheaper and gets re-aired everywhere it can. Once you watch it many don't re-watch. I'd love to know if there were statistics on this either way! Music, on the other hand, doesn't show its age nearly as much and old music is constantly replayed even in the latest TV shows and movies. Seems to be music is almost timeless whereas video is not. But, again, I'd love to see some data around these topics to valid (or invalid) what I think to be true.
hobofan 9y ago
> This is the same problem Netflix & Amazon have been successful in combating. I would say that the jury is still out on that. Lack of Blockbuster movies has always been one of the weak points of Netflix, and they are still in the process of getting started with producing content there (with "Bright" being one of the first of their movies trying to be a Blockbuster). On the other front, they are highly dependent on existing content that people love, and more and more of that is being owned by Disney and pulled from the platform as they are gearing up for their competing service. If they also fail to keep the other big right holders on the platform then soon all they have will be Netflix content (which is probably their 5-10 year plan anyway since that makes them more profitable). I'm not sure a Netflix Originals-only catalog will go over well with the subscriber base. Despite some of their first original content having some good hits (e.g. House of Cards), I think over time their hit-rate pretty much adjusted to the levels of traditional cable channels like HBO/Showtime with a lot of mediocre content.
- noxToken 9y ago
  If Netflix went to in-house only, then they could significantly (I assume) drop the price. Part of Netflix's big expense is licensing content. If all of the major players are pulling content, then the licensing costs for all of that content disappears as well.
  - hobofan 9y ago
    With shared accounts, the price is already pretty low at ~3-4€/person/month. I don't think that a price drop would adequately compensate for a significant loss in content at such a low price point. Yes, in the long run producing their own content will be cheaper. Mid-term buying proven content will probably come out at around the same price as producing new content that the viewers may or may not like. They have better viewer analytics and better ways to globally monetize the content than traditional content producers though.
  - guelo 9y ago
    Doubtful since they're pouring every extra dollar they have into making originals.
zanedb 9y ago
Oh no. Let's take a second here. What will happen if Spotify signs new artists and effectively becomes their own record label? It will start off normally, but eventually (or possibly from the start) Spotify will not allow this music to be streamed anywhere else. It will be exclusive to Spotify, the same way Netflix has done with their originals. Now what happens? Users are forced to pay for multiple music streaming services, just as happened with the video streaming industry. This is already a huge burden on users of video sites (and makes piracy a much more appealing option), but is not even acceptable in the music industry. Users create playlists with their own songs, and will want specific songs. Even with your 90% statistic, which may or may not be true, the other 10% is still very important. I'd imagine that hit songs are streamed more often comparatively but older songs are more important. Hopefully this fracturing doesn't happen, but if so (as I said) piracy certainly looks more appealing. Especially with Google Play Music allowing you to upload your own music..
cracell 9y ago
I think the long term answer here is legislature that forces companies to license things for the same rate to anyone and that rate must be publicly published.
- umanwizard 9y ago
  Not sure about other countries, but I'd be shocked if legislation like this passed in the United States.
  - aaronblohowiak 9y ago
    It has in the past - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_license https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_license
user5994461 9y ago
Netflix is a joke outside of north America.
usrusr 9y ago
Big difference between TV and music streaming, in a nutshell: a TV streaming library is defined by what they have, a music streaming library is defined by what is missing. Serial TV is consumed like a novel, as long as the next episode is available, the availability of everything else is unimportant. Music is consumed in a much more random access pattern, like a lexicon: if the letter M is missing, it's broken. ("You want that particular song by Morrissey? Sorry. Be sure to check out these five Spotify Originals that have also been tagged with #sad" - no, people won't be willing to pay for that)
- cmurphycode 9y ago
  It may be true that music listeners are currently much more annoyed when songs aren't available. However, I think it's wrong to say that TV and movie watchers were any different 5 years ago -- even today, people's number one complaint about Netflix is that famous movie X isn't on there. Netflix worked hard to change that model by figuring out what people liked to watch and generating high quality content in the patterns they saw. Turns out, now everyone watches whatever show Netflix puts in front of them. Do you think it's possible a similar phenomenon could happen for music? I can tell you that since signing up for Spotify Premium, I've certainly been exposed to more new artists that I like, based on their recommendations. Since their library is currently still extensive (like how Netflix had a lot more movies back in the day), I'm very rarely looking for a song they don't have. I can imagine a world where the content holders get more scared (although that would be an impressively delayed reaction) and thus Spotify is pressured out of contracts (just like Netflix was). I'm guessing that Spotify is betting that if that is the case, they can rely on the fact they've been changing their listeners tastes to survive.
  - usrusr 9y ago
    I doubt that a streaming provider would be able to starve out interest in third party music. Most active choice music consumption is essentially a nostalgic act, even when searching for the latest hit that you heard at that party last night. Music preference could almost be considered involuntary. An "original content superspotify" would have to dominate all channels to ensue that customers are rarely overcome be the desire (and the resulting dissatisfaction) for third party music, or restrict themselves to the subset of the market that is never exposed to channels not under their control. Both of these options are what I would consider a likely base for economic success.

nunez 9y ago

It’s really not though because music is a loss leader for amazon, apple and google, but it is spotify’s entire business. The only other major competitors out there are either in major cahoots with the big 3 (tidal, pandora) or gone (soundcloud, grooveshark, rdio). Netflix has this problem too but they “solved” it by making their own content. Amazon are Google are doing the same thing. That’s the direction I see Spotify going, though I wonder why Apple hasn’t done this yet.

nkozyra 9y ago
I'm confused. I think you're saying the same thing as the post you're replying to. The direction would be to own (or "create") the content. In other words, Justin Timberlake or someone with equal clout moves from Sony to Spotify Records (for lack of a better name).
- notatoad 9y ago
  The problem with that is it creates a war for exclusives. If their competitors start doing the same thing, spotify will just end up losing a lot of their content. and personally, unless spotify continues to have the vast majority of the music i want to listen to, i won't continue being a subscriber.
  - wolco 9y ago
    But if they sign the top 30 and you listen to that kind of music you will have to subscribe. Netflicks is creating there own content which would mean spotify would need to create new bands instead of sign existing ones which most likely would fail because they are all under contract.
jon-wood 9y ago
It wouldn’t surprise me if Apple not being in that game yet is because of their long standing agreement with Apple Records (the Beatle’s label), who challenged their trademark a while back when they started selling music. I suspect getting into directly signing artists would breach whatever agreement was made and leave Apple open to a huge trademark suit.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Apple does directly sign non-label artists to exclusive deals with Apple Music, but so far that's mostly established artists, they haven't put money into discovering and developing artists.
- tzahola 9y ago
  "In 1978, Apple Records filed suit against Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) for trademark infringement. The suit was settled in 1981 with the payment of $80,000 to Apple Corps. As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed to stay out of the music business. A dispute subsequently arose in 1989 when Apple Corps sued, alleging that Apple Computer's machines' ability to play back MIDI music was a violation of the 1981 settlement agreement. In 1991 another settlement, of around $26.5 million, was reached.[54][55] In September 2003, Apple Computer was again sued by Apple Corps, this time for introducing the iTunes Music Store and the iPod, which Apple Corps asserted was a violation of Apple's agreement not to distribute music. The trial opened on 29 March 2006 in the UK,[56] and in a judgement issued on 8 May 2006, Apple Corps lost the case." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps#Apple_Corps_v._Apple_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps#Apple_Corps_v._App...
joemi 9y ago
> or gone (soundcloud, grooveshark, rdio) I can't speak for grooveshark or rdio, but as far as I know soundcloud still exists. I just added a song there and listened to some other stuff a week ago. Did I miss something?
- rozenmd 9y ago
  They fired a fair number of developers in San Francisco, Berlin, shut offices etc - but are still running the servers AFAIK.
- JonFish85 9y ago
  Soundcloud exists, but is likely on life support[1]. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14990911 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14990911
fragsworth 9y ago
Music is quite a bit different, in that people spend lots of time curating their own playlists and they listen to the same songs repeatedly. It is incredibly annoying to have songs that you want in your playlists but can't get, EVEN if you pay for multiple services. Making their own content for video has the advantage that most people are OK with opening a new browser tab or an app to watch a specific movie or show. With music, however, you don't want to run multiple conflicting music players, especially when they don't sync up playlists and seamlessly work together. I wonder how that will pan out. It's a significant difference.
- notatoad 9y ago
  Yes, i don't think the original content strategy will work out for streaming sites the way it has for netflix and amazon. I'm not willing to open one app to listen to one album and then another app to listen to a different album. I'll use the service that has all the music i want to listen to. Whether that's piracy or youtube playlists or spotify. If any streaming service starts getting too many exclusives, it's going to just kill the entire streaming market. From my perspective, all the streaming services should be working together to create a healthy marketplace for independent music, and providing every opportunity they can for musicians to avoid signing a big-four contract. If Warner and Sony, and UMG get their act together and create a joint venture streaming service that's the exclusive host of the content they own, Spotify, Google Music, and Apple Music are screwed.
  - rvshchwl 9y ago
    That is basically what happened with Hulu. The service is owned by the major content providers, such as Fox and CBS, and all of the televised content is almost completely exclusive on Hulu now, as opposed to being on Netflix. As more and more shows started to get pulled from Netflix, Netflix had to rely on original shows to make sure that they have a full catalog of streaming content. They paid over $6 billion dollars in creating new shows for 2017. Unfortunately for music, the exclusivity has started to show up in some cases. Artists that own the Tidal service don't allow any of their music on competing services, and Apple has been signing contracts with musicians to have new content show up on their service several months in advance before it does on other services (like Jay Z and Kanye).
kingraoul3 9y ago
What about iHeart? They do own half the physical radio stations in the country which is still how people find new music, you know.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > They do own half the physical radio stations in the country which is still how people find new music, you know. IME, lots of people find new music by genre/mood/etc. curated or “like this song/artist” algorithmic stations in streaming services, not terrestrial radio.
  - kingraoul3 9y ago
    That is not supported by the data. The lions share of new music discovery is still done via terrestrial radio, and the brand identification people have with their favorite stations is crazy high
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      Where is the data showing this?
      - kingraoul3 9y ago
        https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/radio-still-beats-digital-music-discovery/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/radio-still-beats-digit...
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        So, here's a newer piece, with opposing results: https://musicbiz.org/news/music-bizloop-study-millennials-turn-radio-embrace-streaming/ https://musicbiz.org/news/music-bizloop-study-millennials-tu... But it looks like the data from other recent sources are mixed, with different surveys posting widely varying data, consistent in the direction of change from radio to streaming) but not what the current leading discovery sources are or even the relative placement of streaming vs. radio.
remir 9y ago
Apparently Apple is gearing up to create their own video content.

geodel 9y ago

Netflix was/is competing with exclusive products like expensive cable channels or established studios' productions which are not available on vehicle radio, youtube and other free avenues. So Netflix is able to get comparable reach to cable TV. For music there are far more avenues to listen for free and unlimited times with some ads.

BinaryIdiot 9y ago

> This is the same problem Netflix & Amazon have been successful in combating. The answer is to become a content owner by competing with the big labels directly. > All Spotify needs to push the big labels back on their heels is to sign a few top 40 artists of their own No way that's going to work. Music is VASTLY different from video. In video it takes more time and resources to produce each one and replays are rare. In music everything is super cheap to produce and replays are off the chart. If Spotify became their own label and signed 100 of the top artists, their old songs are STILL with the previous label and will likely never leave. Spotify still NEEDS those songs or it's SOL.

komali2 9y ago
Alternatively, as less people stop listening to the radio, songs from the 70's, 80's, 90's, and eventually the early 2000's will need a venue to be played on. If less people listen to the radio, AND less people buy music directly through itunes or whatever, the only option the big 3 will have is to work with streaming services.
hobofan 9y ago
> If Spotify became their own label and signed 100 of the top artists, their old songs are STILL with the previous label and will likely never leave. Spotify still NEEDS those songs or it's SOL. As I pointed out in a sibling comment, I think Netflix actually has the same problem. There is a significant presence of long-running shows that people love to watch on Netflix: Friends, Breaking Bad, Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother, etc.. A big favorite "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" just left the catalog - presumably due to the acquisition of FX by Disney - and "Archer" will likely soon follow for the same reason. A lot of those are not new and people still watch them (either to catch up on a missed cult hit or to rewatch their favorites), and the will continue to do so for the next 10-20 years. As long as that's the case Netflix also has to continue to make deals with the existing rights holders or substantially shift their core offering.
- BinaryIdiot 9y ago
  > As I pointed out in a sibling comment, I think Netflix actually has the same problem. There is a significant presence of long-running shows that people love to watch on Netflix: Friends, Breaking Bad, Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother, etc.. Is that really true though? As video content gets older it usually gets watched less, becomes cheaper and gets re-aired everywhere it can. Once you watch it many don't re-watch. I'd love to know if there were statistics on this either way! Music, on the other hand, doesn't show its age nearly as much and old music is constantly replayed even in the latest TV shows and movies. Seems to be music is almost timeless whereas video is not. But, again, I'd love to see some data around these topics to valid (or invalid) what I think to be true.

hobofan 9y ago

> This is the same problem Netflix & Amazon have been successful in combating. I would say that the jury is still out on that. Lack of Blockbuster movies has always been one of the weak points of Netflix, and they are still in the process of getting started with producing content there (with "Bright" being one of the first of their movies trying to be a Blockbuster). On the other front, they are highly dependent on existing content that people love, and more and more of that is being owned by Disney and pulled from the platform as they are gearing up for their competing service. If they also fail to keep the other big right holders on the platform then soon all they have will be Netflix content (which is probably their 5-10 year plan anyway since that makes them more profitable). I'm not sure a Netflix Originals-only catalog will go over well with the subscriber base. Despite some of their first original content having some good hits (e.g. House of Cards), I think over time their hit-rate pretty much adjusted to the levels of traditional cable channels like HBO/Showtime with a lot of mediocre content.

noxToken 9y ago
If Netflix went to in-house only, then they could significantly (I assume) drop the price. Part of Netflix's big expense is licensing content. If all of the major players are pulling content, then the licensing costs for all of that content disappears as well.
- hobofan 9y ago
  With shared accounts, the price is already pretty low at ~3-4€/person/month. I don't think that a price drop would adequately compensate for a significant loss in content at such a low price point. Yes, in the long run producing their own content will be cheaper. Mid-term buying proven content will probably come out at around the same price as producing new content that the viewers may or may not like. They have better viewer analytics and better ways to globally monetize the content than traditional content producers though.
- guelo 9y ago
  Doubtful since they're pouring every extra dollar they have into making originals.

zanedb 9y ago

Oh no. Let's take a second here. What will happen if Spotify signs new artists and effectively becomes their own record label? It will start off normally, but eventually (or possibly from the start) Spotify will not allow this music to be streamed anywhere else. It will be exclusive to Spotify, the same way Netflix has done with their originals. Now what happens? Users are forced to pay for multiple music streaming services, just as happened with the video streaming industry. This is already a huge burden on users of video sites (and makes piracy a much more appealing option), but is not even acceptable in the music industry. Users create playlists with their own songs, and will want specific songs. Even with your 90% statistic, which may or may not be true, the other 10% is still very important. I'd imagine that hit songs are streamed more often comparatively but older songs are more important. Hopefully this fracturing doesn't happen, but if so (as I said) piracy certainly looks more appealing. Especially with Google Play Music allowing you to upload your own music..

cracell 9y ago

I think the long term answer here is legislature that forces companies to license things for the same rate to anyone and that rate must be publicly published.

umanwizard 9y ago
Not sure about other countries, but I'd be shocked if legislation like this passed in the United States.
- aaronblohowiak 9y ago
  It has in the past - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_license https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_license

user5994461 9y ago

Netflix is a joke outside of north America.

usrusr 9y ago

Big difference between TV and music streaming, in a nutshell: a TV streaming library is defined by what they have, a music streaming library is defined by what is missing. Serial TV is consumed like a novel, as long as the next episode is available, the availability of everything else is unimportant. Music is consumed in a much more random access pattern, like a lexicon: if the letter M is missing, it's broken. ("You want that particular song by Morrissey? Sorry. Be sure to check out these five Spotify Originals that have also been tagged with #sad" - no, people won't be willing to pay for that)

cmurphycode 9y ago
It may be true that music listeners are currently much more annoyed when songs aren't available. However, I think it's wrong to say that TV and movie watchers were any different 5 years ago -- even today, people's number one complaint about Netflix is that famous movie X isn't on there. Netflix worked hard to change that model by figuring out what people liked to watch and generating high quality content in the patterns they saw. Turns out, now everyone watches whatever show Netflix puts in front of them. Do you think it's possible a similar phenomenon could happen for music? I can tell you that since signing up for Spotify Premium, I've certainly been exposed to more new artists that I like, based on their recommendations. Since their library is currently still extensive (like how Netflix had a lot more movies back in the day), I'm very rarely looking for a song they don't have. I can imagine a world where the content holders get more scared (although that would be an impressively delayed reaction) and thus Spotify is pressured out of contracts (just like Netflix was). I'm guessing that Spotify is betting that if that is the case, they can rely on the fact they've been changing their listeners tastes to survive.
- usrusr 9y ago
  I doubt that a streaming provider would be able to starve out interest in third party music. Most active choice music consumption is essentially a nostalgic act, even when searching for the latest hit that you heard at that party last night. Music preference could almost be considered involuntary. An "original content superspotify" would have to dominate all channels to ensue that customers are rarely overcome be the desire (and the resulting dissatisfaction) for third party music, or restrict themselves to the subset of the market that is never exposed to channels not under their control. Both of these options are what I would consider a likely base for economic success.