Slashdot Mirror
Universal Reportedly Wants Spotify To Scale Back Its Free Streaming
An anonymous reader writes with news that Universal CEO Lucian Grainge is not a big fan of free streaming music. "Spotify might have bent over backwards to lift restrictions on its free streaming service a couple of years ago, but at least one music label appears eager to turn back the clock. Financial Times sources understand that Universal is using licensing negotiations to squeeze Spotify and demand more limits for those who don't pay up, such as restricting the amount of time they can play tunes in a given month. The publisher isn't confirming anything, but CEO Lucian Grainge has lately been chastising the free, ad-based streaming model — it's no secret that he would like more paying customers. According to one insider, Universal believes that Spotify is directly hurting sales at stores like iTunes."
...and years before that, big labels got in trouble for paying people to stream their songs for free!
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
why isn't universal getting the same cut for paid or free streaming?
As I explained in a comment to a previous story, US copyright law provides for a compulsory license to stream sound recordings at a fixed royalty so long as a service resembles radio more than a jukebox. Pandora, for example, selects songs in a similar style to the artist whose name you key in and is therefore not considered an "interactive service" that substitutes for purchases.
The middle class income keeps stagnating and prices keep going up. The first thing to go is entertainment.
Believe it or not, as someone in the entertainment industry (videogames) who has worked through a couple of recessions, my job has been far more recession-resistant than I would have anticipated. No, the first thing to go is expensive luxuries, or other big-ticket items. Even during a recession, most people are still working, and even if they don't have enough for more expensive purchases, they still apparently have enough to buy a videogame or two, go out to see a movie or to dinner, or pay for some music.
I'd blame the major media industry's resistance to new business models more than anything. Oh, and the fact that they target their customers with lawsuits and push shitty laws through Congress. It's no wonder they've engendered such hatred among their customers (not that EA and Activision haven't done the same, of course). I've never understood how companies that make entertainment products can manage to continuously piss off their customers with such regularity.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.