I like a lot of what you say in this - especially the last sentence. Out of curiosity, though, does anyone have numbers on the "spread the word" free model? I'd

I like a lot of what you say in this - especially the last sentence. Out of curiosity, though, does anyone have numbers on the "spread the word" free model? I'd love to see some hard evidence (it that's even possible to collect) that it works. A lot of people are essentially saying "focusing on album sales to the exclusion of free streaming is shortsighted" -- but how do we know that's true, aside from an intuitive gut reaction? Are tour revenues for Spotify artists increasing? Are more people going to gigs? There must be numbers somewhere. I should also note that a large percentage of tour revenues are from album sales; I don't know to what extent Spotify is cannibalizing those. So it's true that tour revenue is probably the number one income source, but don't forget how important physical merch sales are on those tours.