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."

Comments

I'm Torn.

[sg_oneill]

Whilst I support what Spotify do on principle (I havent pirated a single song since spotify came out, although I had already started buying my most loved stuff on iTunes) it does represent a pretty bad deal for artists. I've had a fair few thousand listens on spotify, not bad for a small band, but haven't seen more than a few measly cents off this.If this translated to, say, a hundred sales on iTunes, well it'd be somethng. There has to be a middle ground where artists can get paid (I'd love to write you guys music for a living), but lets music be free.

I ended up putting my stuff on torrents, beause screw it, if I'm not going to be paid, I might as well at least get some exposure out of it. But it'd be nice to sell a few albums.

Re: Or, from another perspective ...

[AvitarX]

Of course it's hurting sales.

Radio stations based on a song are often superior to my collection. At work it's all we use now, yeah yeah, anecdote.

Radio stations that play what we want are better than Dj ing from our own collection, and way better than the radio.

I was converted to a paying customer to get specific songs when I wanted too though. I think that what they really should attack though is custom playlists on the desktop (to maximize revenue, as a happy paying customer, I just hope they don't kill the concept of music subscription, I don't know how I'd discover new music without one).

Re:Or, from another perspective ...

[Half-pint HAL]

Or, you know, perhaps it is hurting sales because it's competing. Which is perfectly legitimate, free market and all that.

And by the same token, it's perfectly legitimate for Universal to threaten to remove their catalogue, free market and all that.

Spotify's competitivity derives in no small part from its low cost base. When the first reports of Spotify's royalty payments came out, I looked at my CD collection and tried to estimate how much in royalties I had paid to artists. I think I figured that in a lifetime of listening to Spotify, I would generate something like five to ten CDs worth of royalties, or something crazy like that.