4 ms·
It seems to me in theory it should be possible to make the economics work. I suspect few people would buy more than one new CD per month, so if the monthly fee
by facepalm 12y ago
It seems to me in theory it should be possible to make the economics work. I suspect few people would buy more than one new CD per month, so if the monthly fee is roughly equal to the price of a CD, the money flow could remain kind of the same.
Maybe so far the industry depends on whales (people buying a LOT of music all the time), on the other hand subscription services might also make money from people who would otherwise have spent less.
Being free, people might listen to more music on Spotify than they would have listened to otherwise. But that only means the money could be distributed more evenly. Maybe I don't listen to Lana Del Rey 150 times, but overall I will listen to 150 songs, so those 0.99$ will still flow into the system and be distributed.
- furyg3 12y agoI used to buy a CD or two every month. Then I started pirating all of my music (mostly out of convenience). Then pay-per-download options came along (iTunes), and I used that a bit, but it was still inferior to pirating. Then services like Spotify came along and I'm paying for most of my music again. In total I'm paying less for music than I was paying back when I was buying CDs. But I'm paying more than I was when I was stealing. And in the process we've gotten rid of stamping and distributing CDs, running stores, etc. If record labels can't make money now, their whole business model is screwed. I suspect that the real problem is competition, though, and not profit-per-song.