Wait a minute. Now there is no doubt Spotify gets a paying user a lot more music than they would get by buying albums. But there just isn't that much entertai

Wait a minute. Now there is no doubt Spotify gets a paying user a lot more music than they would get by buying albums. But there just isn't that much entertainment money out there either. Most people have what they have and they spend it each month. It takes something unusual to get people to spend more and when they do it comes from savings, or they don't do some other activity involving a financial transaction. This idea of a fan buying all the albums if it were not for Spotify does not pan out. The money just is not there. We learned all this during the piracy wars, and as iTunes settled on a buck a track. The other thing we learned is artists can get known when people have access to a lot of music. Before the Internet, radio was about the only way and the broadcast people were the gatekeepers. When people could share music directly, a lot changed! Artists could get known by working social media, and by selling directly to fans, etc... Spotify is popular because it does compensate artists (and those artists deserve more of what Spotify collects), and it adds real value to listeners able to share play lists, seek any music they want and to do so without having to worry about infringement and other painful possibilities associated with tormenting and piracy in general. Folks do see music as a commodity as they should. Music production has been made easy. Tons of music is produced each day. That doesn't mean it is good music. And there is real value right there. Just finding good music is hard without Spotify and friends. The idea of there being billions more dollars for movies and music is not reality. It is all about people hearing a lot less music, seeing fewer movies. Say we have a perfect pay for play system. When new artists want to get into the scene, what will they do? Damn near give the tunes away! And that little detail is why a buck a track made sense when it happened.