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

Or, from another perspective ...

[gstoddart]

According to one insider, Universal believes that Spotify is directly hurting sales at stores like iTunes.

Or, you know, maybe the insiders are morons who believe in their unrealistic assumptions about just how much they're going to sell.

Because, you know, according to the copyright idiots, more value than the GDP of the US or any other country is lost to piracy.

Maybe the pay-for-play digital music market is exceedingly finite, and your wishful thinking of getting billions of dollars for doing nothing is complete crap?

Re:Or, from another perspective ...

[93 Escort Wagon]

I find it funny to recall that, only a few years ago, it was iTunes that was the enemy according to the big labels - and they did everything they could to undermine Apple's influence.

They figured out how to monetize that... and I'm sure they'll figure out how to turn Spotify into a profit generator as well.

Re:Or, from another perspective ...

[msauve]

...and years before that, big labels got in trouble for paying people to stream their songs for free!

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.

Re: Or, from another perspective ...

[Maritz]

Radio stations based on a song are often superior to my collection.

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

I've read these sentences a few times, can't get them to make any sense at all.

Re: Or, from another perspective ...

[AvitarX]

hmmm, sleep is good...

I think my vague point was that the free radio offered by Spotify is (usually) better than playing from my (or another's) music collection. The free Spotify radio eliminates the need to buy any music, because it's better than the music one would select and buy on their own.

Unlike radio, which was a way to advertise music to buy, I regularly see Spotify (and even Pandora with it's limited selection) as a substitute for ever needing to buy music, far more often than radio acted that way.

This is leaving aside the fact that Spotify allows for custom playlists, and not just radio from a desktop (for free).

I think really, what the labels should eliminate, if they're that concerned, is the free playlist organization on desktops though, most people I know are still unlikely to stream too much music on mobile due to bandwidth limits (the caching feature helps with this though).

Spotify, even the free version, eliminates the need for a music collection, as it's better than radio, and knows about artists I don't know about, and when picking a specific song I like to base a station on, it does an amazing job of throwing together a playlist.

Having said all that, I subscribe, first to Spotify, to use it in my car, and then to Google Play, because I can side load what it is missing (mostly local bands from my youth).

Re: Or, from another perspective ...

[Maritz]

That makes perfect sense now. Thanks ;)

Not surprising

[bobjr94]

All the labels will soon want their own streaming service where they control they songs played, ads you listen to and what your favorite songs are. If you search for an artist not on their label, you will not be able to hear it and it will direct you to their own music you might like.

Re:Not surprising

[BarbaraHudson]

And they can grab the money Spotify is making on ads for a "free" tier. It's just one more app, no big deal.

Re:Not surprising

[wiredlogic]

What they really want is a continuation of the payola system they have now with radio where they get to manipulate the market, promoting only the artists they've anointed and locking everyone else out. Free streaming internet music disrupts that.

Re:Not surprising

[gl4ss]

they tried that kind of shit already years and years ago you know.

right now they're bitching about low royalties on spotify, on stuff they uploaded to youtube for even lower royalties - WITH A FRIGGIN VIDEO and extras like live performances and such.

Message to all braindead CEOs out there

[Anonymous Coward]

The middle class income keeps stagnating and prices keep going up. The first thing to go is entertainment.

Re:Message to all braindead CEOs out there

[Anonymous Coward]

This is precisely what I was thinking: my income has not gone up in real terms in the last 7 years. If anything, it's gone down, down, down. I don't even have to buy it a drink and it goes down.

Food prices, petrol prices, mortgage interest rates, and rents, all go up in this time, but my wage stays the same.

Let's take a wild guess as to why I've spent nothing on entertainment in the last eighteen months. Could it be the record profits made by the media cartels? (I work for one, and they're stealing a good portion of my wages through illegal means, and holding me accountable for any reporting of it to the government, so I can starve on the streets, or dob them in as soon as I find another job....)

Re:Message to all braindead CEOs out there

[CohibaVancouver]

Let's take a wild guess as to why I've spent nothing on entertainment in the last eighteen months. Could it be the record profits made by the media cartels?

Could it be that it's reasonably easy to get media for free?

If it was 1985 and your options were to copy an album, cassette or VHS tape (in 'real time') would you have spent more on entertainment?

Re:Message to all braindead CEOs out there

[Dutch Gun]

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.

Re:Message to all braindead CEOs out there

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be that it's reasonably easy to get media for free?

You answered your own question by bringing up cassette and VHS copying. And it's only free if your time is worthless - watch as Game of Thrones bitorrents drop as HBO finally deploys a streaming service that isn't tied to a cable subscription.

Re:Message to all braindead CEOs out there

[Half-pint HAL]

I've never understood how companies that make entertainment products can manage to continuously piss off their customers with such regularity.

It's easy -- and here's the secret: you aren't buying the brand. When was the last time you went to see a film because it was by Paramount? When did you last buy a CD because it was by Universal? Probably never. We do not associate the product with the publisher, so hatred of the publisher doesn't have a big effect on sales.

Re:Message to all braindead CEOs out there

[jedidiah]

That little nugget again... OF COURSE your time is worthless. Wages are stagnant. Good jobs are harder to come by. If you have a decent job, it's a salary job where you don't get ANY money for working extra. If your job is crap, you have to go through hoops just to get enough hours to feed yourself.

Free time is either easier to come by or devalued by current labor standards.

Also, there's no opportunity cost in letting a machine work for you.

Re:Message to all braindead CEOs out there

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, close.

For most, order of necessity goes:
- Food, water, heat(A/C..?), gas(car), cell phone, home internet.

As the ability to provide these for oneself starts to become difficult, as we're seeing, entertainment WILL get squeezed. We saw a touch of this type of reality, when gas hit over $5 a few years back. If anyone, including you, think they're immune, or 'not really effected' with the worsening income gap, I have some bad news for you!

Re:Message to all braindead CEOs out there

[Half-pint HAL]

there's been more music (and books, and photos and movies) genereated in the last 10 years then in all of history before it

supply went waaaaaay up, which means that prices have to drop (and yeah I know most of it is crap, but 90% of everything is crap)

In theory, that's a sound argument -- but your argument is predicated on the total spend remaining static, and therefore being spread further, and I don't believe that's what's happening at the moment. I believe people's overall music spend is dropping. Mine certainly has, but maybe I'm extrapolating too much from myself.

Re:Message to all braindead CEOs out there

[OutOnARock]

....actually for most its water way before food.......

Re:Message to all braindead CEOs out there

[Half-pint HAL]

5. Pumping out garbage!=$Profit$

It's apparently Universals model that is unsustainable.

It may be garbage, but it sells in volume. It's not Universal's profit levels that I'm worried about, but artists'.

Well, he's not wrong there

[PhrostyMcByte]

Universal believes that Spotify is directly hurting sales at stores like iTunes.

Universal's belief is most certainly correct to some extent, but is that a bad thing? True fans, I think, would find other ways of supporting the artists they love, and I'd guess the ones who do nothing but stream wouldn't have spent more money on it in the first place.

Re:Well, he's not wrong there

[Opportunist]

Who gives a fuck about supporting some artist? This is about profit for Universal, the artist is the necessary evil to your money!

Re:Well, he's not wrong there

[sumdumass]

What I am confused about is why isn't universal getting the same cut for paid or free streaming? Or if they are, why the fuck do they care who is paying the bill. Free streaming should have adds involved and those adds should pay the same cut to universal as the paid streaming does. Or am I missing something here?

It seems to me that if Universal doesn't like the free streaming, they likely wouldn't like the paid streaming either. Maybe it's the premium version of spotify that allows you to save songs and play lists to your devices to offline listening they have a problem with. But then again, all the got to do is price it correctly and make the same cash for essentially renting music to idiots with too much money.

Re:Well, he's not wrong there

[Half-pint HAL]

True fans, I think, would find other ways of supporting the artists they love, and I'd guess the ones who do nothing but stream wouldn't have spent more money on it in the first place.

"I think" -- words to build a business model on.

People in general are self-centred and riddled with feelings of entitlement. We all tend to feel "I've done my bit, now I deserve a reward" -- whether that's slacking off on your turn on the cleaning rota "because I always have to take the bins out, so I deserve a break", giving yourself a pay rise as the director of a charity "because I deserve it after all the lives I've saved", or claiming excessive expenses as a public servant "because really, after all I've done for the poor, I deserve a meal that's more expensive that the average family's weekly meal budget, washed down with wine that would feed an average family for a month".

"True fans" would mostly say "I've supported them since the beginning -- now I deserve my reward." There would be a minority that keep paying and paying, but if you want to see what proportion they would be in, look at home many Kickstarter backers pay more than a basic rate...

Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[Karmashock]

Because... universal has hosted every single song in its library on Youtube.... for free.

And I don't have to deal with some shitty streaming service deciding what it is going to play next. I can just play the exact songs I want.

And those ads on youtube? Well, adblock kills them. I try to keep adblock off if I want to support the person that posts the video... but if I either don't care or I actively want them to make no money... then adblock is happening.

Here is the thing, Universal... the CD is dead. The Record is dead.

What did you people do before records? You existed and your people made money.

I know they were on the radio... I know they were doing concerts. I know they were singing in advertising. I know they were getting cast in movies or used by movies to do singing bits.

That is what you're going back to.

Because the CD is dead.

Spotify etc are at best like the radio of old. And the radio didn't charge listeners to listen. You tune in and listen. Put an ad in there if that makes you happy. What money you get is going to come by taking a percentage of that revenue.

If that isn't a lot... don't know what to tell you. The ad companies are rating the VALUE of your listeners as that amount of money.

If reaching those people with an ad is worth 2 cents then your music is likely not worth a great deal more than that.

Get over it.

Find something else for your artists to do to make money besides make records. Records are dead.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[occasional_dabbler]

Yes, this.

It used to be that the machinery that was needed to create lots of LPs or even CDs was expensive and the few bands that made it mega paid for the studios, who then could record and release music from all the other 'hopefuls,' who might one day also be mega.

Well guess what? Technology means it is now trivial to record and publish music; there is no longer a need for the industry at all. We are back to musicians making music because they want to, the good ones will be able to make a living and the very good ones might get rich but there is no need for the machine and all those music execs will have their snouts pushed out of the trough just like the buggy whip ones.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[Somebody Is Using My]

Spotify etc are at best like the radio of old.

Spotify etc. are /better/ than the radio of old. With Spotify, the publishers can get paid - even if a miniscule amount - everytime anyone listens to a song. With Spotify etc., a truckload of accurate information is gathered about what songs are popular (most listened to) and which songs are not, allowing them to better gauge what sorts of new music would bring in the big bucks. With Spotify etc., they get all sorts of information about who their listeners are; their age, income, likes, dislikes, and more.

Radio offered none of this. The publishers put songs on the air and hoped they were hits, never really sure what "clicked" with the listeners and what didn't, who the listeners really were, and they got paid a fixed amount regardless of whether only 1 person was listening or 10,000 (and more often than not, paid for the privilege).

Plus it's generally easier to record songs off the radio than it is off Spotify (not that the latter is that difficult either, but with radio it's even easier).

So why does the music industry hate streaming music so much when radio is in every way an inferior distribution / advertising method?

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[khellendros1984]

Spotify etc. are /better/ than the radio of old.

Each extra listener increases bandwidth costs, which old radio didn't. This is a trade-off for all the demographic info that the publishers get, so it's a direct cost paid for some marketing information.

Plus it's generally easier to record songs off the radio than it is off Spotify

I'd disagree with that. On Spotify et al, I've got my recording+processing equipment built into my listening equipment. That's not necessarily the case with radio, and the best I could hope for is a 2nd-gen analog copy anyhow.

So why does the music industry hate streaming music so much when radio is in every way an inferior distribution / advertising method?

Change is risk, and big business is vehemently opposed to risk. Better the enemy you know than the one you don't.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[tepples]

Technology means it is now trivial to record and publish music

But is it also trivial to ensure that your music is truly original, not an infringing accidental copy of an existing song?

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[Roblimo]

I Listen to I (heart) Radio. It's owned by Clear Channel, which also owns 800 radio stations. Somehow I doubt that record companies want to piss them off.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[Half-pint HAL]

Actually, current research shows that our tastes are narrowing. We have absolute free choice, so we go and buy exactly what we want, rather than picking something up because it's there. The money is getting more and more concentrated in a minority of hands, and as it does, it's easier for prices to drop (as the guys at the top still get lots of cash). Lower prices and lower sales would be very bad for the little guys at the bottom end of the market.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[Karmashock]

You could get paid on the radio as well. Just not very well and you did better to use the radio to promote your music instead.

Which is something they should do with the internet radio people. The problem is that they're seeing spotify as a type of record sale or lease or rent. It isn't.

As to information gathering... clicks... fine, spotify is happy to provide that regardless.

As to it being harder to record things off spotify...

1. No it isn't. There are lots of software packages that will do it easily.
2. Who needs to do that? If I want to pirate the music, I can just download it off a torrent or rip the sound directly from their Youtube video.

Here is something content providers need to understand:

You cannot stop piracy. Can't.

So what you need to focus on is making people not WANT to pirate. Not forbid them from doing it... you can't stop them from doing it. You have to make them not WANT to do it.

Its marketing.

instead of calling their lawyers and hiring IT companies to go after fucking billion people pirating... instead, call your marketing and ad people in and talk about how you make people not WANT to do it.

The music industry has almost destroyed themselves by not understanding the internet and new technology. And fucking with the internet radio people is just one more fuck up amongst many.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[drkstr1]

It makes a lot more sense when you realize that over 95% of all media in the US is owned by 6 companies[1]. When you control the national dialog, you get to decide what's popular and what's not. This is why media companies despise the internet, and even worse, the big bad "piracy" boogie man. Us plebs being able to spread ideas and information without them being the gage keeper is literally their worst nightmare. Hell we might just go and do something crazy, like choose our own poloticians to vote for The chump change they get from media sales is nothing compared to the loss of control these companies stand to lose.

[1] Source: http://www.stateofthemedia.org...

(please excuse the typos... I'm on the mobile)

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[Karmashock]

Some aspects of the studio are good. Getting an agent is still a good idea. Getting some sort of mentoring is good. Having an agency that can jam a lot of talented people together to form a more marketable product is good. This guy can sing, this guy plays the drums, this guy plays the guitar... you all are in a band now... come up with a name by the time I get back and we'll see if we need to buy some songs from some song writers.

Etc.

There's value in the institution. But the institution needs to get over the rock gods being a thing of the past. It needs to go back to its roots and start over.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[Karmashock]

Most of the music uploads don't have a video component. They'll have some still image... which the compression nicely cuts down to the bandwidth required to transmit that image ONCE and not much more. So basically they already do that.

Sometime it is a music video but that is increasingly less common as MTV becomes less relevant.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[trippin_efnet]

What should scare us even more is: Those same companies are the ones buying up the companies that deliver your internet to your home. Comcast, Time-Warner, etc... What are they going to do once they control that distribution medium is the big question we should we all be asking.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[JohnnyMindcrime]

The CD is still very much alive, in my house anyway.

At this moment in time, I don't see myself ever paying for a digital music download, call me old fashioned but I need something tangible when it comes to music. (Though I do admit to downloading and paying for games through Steam and Good Old Games.)

To me, the CD represents excellent value for money, especially if I am paying around £10 UK for a piece of music I may well end up repeatedly enjoying over the next few decades.

Plus I never buy a bad CD but ALWAYS buy a good CD. I use Usenet and BitTorrent to get a "dodgy" copy of any new CD I am interested in, I give it a listen to and if I like it then I buy it straight away, usually on Amazon. If the download is crap, I delete it because it's not even worth the disk space.

Sorry, I probably do miss out on a lot of younger talented musicians who only release digital music but my excuse is I am in my fifties and my musical passions are mainly hard rock, prog rock, krautrock and blues from the late 60s through to the early 80s. From that perspective, the record companies are currently doing a superb job rereleasing and remastering both popular and extremely obscure artists from the genres and periods that I enjoy.

And because I get to hear every CD before I buy it, I never buy a bad one. That makes me an extremely happy and valued music consumer who is entirely content with the job the record companies are doing, I will never be able to find the time to get round to listening to anywhere near all of what they are releasing currently.

My CD collection amounts to over 2,500 of them to date, the added bonus of them is that I rip them once to put on my music server then they serve as their own backups sitting on a shelf - with nice sleeve notes to read whilst on the toilet because I am that passionate about my music.

There are extremely talented modern artists out there, but the vast majority of modern music I hear does not have the longevity or quality that I like in music, I am therefore not surprised that it's designed to be disposable, such that when you are bored with it after a few months, you just delete if from your hard disk.

Incidentally, I am probably also a total music snob in that I don't treat music like "Pick n Mix" sweeties at the cinema - I don't believe in picking just the tracks I want from an artist, any artist who cannot engage me for the entire length of an album is not one I would care to listen to anyway. I therefore listen to full albums, not single tracks or compilations.

Likewise, my music is a passion for me, that means that a lot of the time I just sit there and listen to it on some good hi-fi, I don't always have it in background whilst I am doing something else. Someone who just listens to music that way is not a true music fan anyway.

It's important to not make sweeping statements. Music means entirely different things to different people, to me it is extremely important bearing in mind I also go and see many artists play live too.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[tepples]

They would return no hits. Shazam and Google Song Search work with specific recordings. They cannot identify a new recording of an existing song. SoundHound claims to be able to identify humming, but it failed to find matches to pop songs that I used to test. Nor can any such automated service identify the sort of comprehensive nonliteral similarity for which Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were recently busted.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[azaris]

The CD is still very much alive, in my house anyway.

At this moment in time, I don't see myself ever paying for a digital music download, call me old fashioned but I need something tangible when it comes to music. (Though I do admit to downloading and paying for games through Steam and Good Old Games.)

To me, the CD represents excellent value for money, especially if I am paying around £10 UK for a piece of music I may well end up repeatedly enjoying over the next few decades.

Your CDs will not function a few decades from now.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[RavenLrD20k]

What did you people [Universal] do before records? You existed and your people made money.

No they didn't. Media companies didn't exist before Records. Universal Music Group didn't exist before 1934 (as Decca Records). Vinyl Records were invented in 1881. Audio radio broadcasting didn't take off until the 20's. Basically, the media companies were born from these technologies, therefore they did nothing before these technologies existed. Now the Internet has started pushing the media companies into irrelevance and they feel the noose closing around their necks. They're having trouble finding new talent that want to sign with them because YouTube and Patreon and others have already performed the massive distribution for these artists without signed in blood contracts that Lucifer would be proud of. Every distribution mole Media Companies try to whack down, two more pop up, and the spring on the original mole recoils back harder causing the corps to hit themselves in the head with the mallet each time. They're finding that when both their former customers AND people with talent that's worth anything want nothing to do with them it's getting more and more difficult to survive.

Hopefully they'll find out sooner than later that they can't.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[RavenLrD20k]

But is it also trivial to ensure that your music is truly original, not an infringing accidental copy of an existing song?

Because the labels are so very good at making sure that songs stay musically original.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[Karmashock]

As to the CD being alive at your house, that hardly matters to the music industry unless others agree. And not enough do.

The CD is dead.

As to dodgy copies, if you download a FLAC file you're getting a Lossless copy of the disc. A full CD is about 200-300 MB using that compression.

My music needs to be digital regardless. If I bought a CD, I'd just have to digitize it to add it to my home music library. Drives cost about 50 USD per terabyte... so I can store about 4000 albums on a single 50 dollar 1 terabyte drive with LOSSLESS compression.

CD libraries are by comparison quite annoying... they take up a lot of space, you have, you have to deal with all the CD books, backing them up is a pain in the ass and you can't stream them.

I can stream my home media library to any machine in the world. CDs can't compete with that.

As to music being disposable, you've actually missed what has happened in music... no offense. There is no centralized unitary music culture anymore. The rock gods are gone and what is filling their place in so far as the studios are concerned is a lot of preprocessed pop crap. Its basically as if every single band were the Monkeys. There are relatively few people writing the music that these bands ultimately play and that has the consequence that all of these pop bands sound the same because they're basically just playing the music from a small group of writers.

That is the big studios. They are producing drek. If you go out of your way to avoid that shit then you'll find that there is plenty of talent and good music out there that is as worthy of surviving as anything from the 60s. HOWEVER, because there is no centralization these artists are HIGHLY fragmented. There are arguably hundreds of music genres active right now. Far more diversity then anything in the 60s. And that doesn't mean you'll like much of it... but there is something there for everyone.

The issue is getting people to listen to things to see what people like and what they don't like. An artist that has a thousand people that buy his music in these ratified environments is doing pretty well. The point is not to be a rock god. The rock gods are dead.

The point is to perhaps get enough of a following that you can do the starving artist thing for awhile until you maybe can move up a notch. But just a notch.

There are good and bad things about this... the good is that the bar to entry is very low and that means you get more people making music. The bad is that it is very hard for anyone to actually make a living at it, there is quite a lot of shitty music because the bar is perhaps a little too low, and it is almost impossible to audit it all.

As to pick and mix, personally there isn't an artist that has ever been able to do that. Every album in my experience has a shitty track that I don't care for and if I don't care for it then I'd rather not have it in my playlist.

What is more, I like the freedom of being able to compose my own playlists. I often mix and match artists because I find their various songs play with each other better then works by a single artist. It also keeps the music fresher that way. The music in a different context is different and that is interesting.

I am one of those people that craves new experiences. I will listen to music from anyone a few times just to really get it set in my mind... and then I might not listen to it again either ever again or not for years.

This applies to any artist.

In regards to only giving your music your full attention... I've always had a hard time with that. The human mind has many parts. Different lobes that do different things. And music rarely engages enough of my mind to make me feel like I'm doing something. I just get bored unless I'm doing something else. This doesn't mean I can't appreciate good music. But other parts of my mind that are not musical can only twiddle their metaphorical thumbs if I just sit there.

In regards to sweeping statements... I was talking about the econom

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[Karmashock]

There were things like ascap though...

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[RavenLrD20k]

ASCAP (founded 1914) was still created after the invention of the Vinyl Record. The assorted Media Foundations were built out of a necessity for managing and facilitating widespread distribution of a new technology that was too expensive for individuals to handle on their own without a way to spread the costs to a wider group (kinda like the insurance model, the wider you disburse your costs, the cheaper a product is for all involved). You first need the recording technologies in place for that to be a viable business.

Before records the way music was reproduced and distributed was through sheet music, which was handled by the Newspaper and Book Publishing houses. Back then performances were done by local live musicians or the original wandering musician/composers. Live performance royalties at that time were paid for in the purchase of the sheet music.

Fast forward to now and distribution has become so cheap that it's easily managed and facilitated by the individual without having to rely so much on a large corporation to get a name out there. The Media Companies have outlived their usefulness, just as many newspaper publishers have had to shutter their doors with the advent of Internet News when they couldn't move to the new model fast enough. There may be one way the media corps can save themselves from complete extinction, but it would mean completely changing the model they've used since their inception over 100 years ago: Drop the need to own the music and personas and help people develop a public sellable image. Good luck with convincing them of that.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[Shirley Marquez]

If the ads actually were worth two cents the record labels might be happy. Spotify is currently playing less than one tenth of a cent for song plays by free users, and the amount they pay is 70% of their total ad revenue. They pay about 10 times as much for plays by paying users (the number fluctuates between half a cent and a cent per play, because revenue and the number of plays changes from month to month) which is 70% of their subscription revenue.

Spotify really wants everybody to subscribe, and the labels would also like that. But they're not willing to compromise the free tier too much because they see it as a necessary promotional tool for the paid service. Spotify has been hard-line about not restricting any songs to be only available to paid subscribers, because they believe that would quickly lead to the free service offering only music that nobody wants to hear, and then it would be impossible to get people in the door. (Paid service also gets you ad-free listening, higher quality streams, and the ability to download songs to your mobile device for offline listening. In some countries the free tier has a limit on the number of hours you can listen; they currently enforce no limit in the US.)

The basic problem with the free tier is that advertisers won't pay enough for those listeners to make the model work well. That may change over time if online radio advertising can prove its value, or it may never change. If it does not, I think the eventual endpoint is that services like the free Spotify tier will go away. But I also think the company is right about the current need for it to grow the streaming market, and the record labels just have to deal with the loss of revenue in the short term. That will be a challenge for them, because long term thinking is not a priority in most board rooms.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[Karmashock]

yes, so they can make 5 records a year for nostalgia instead of 2.

Give me a break.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[khellendros1984]

You failed to learn multiplication in grade school, I take it. A large number of people times a small cost per person can still be a large cost, especially if you're looking at some of the advertising-only services, where the company's paying a tiny price for bandwidth, but also getting a tiny income from the ad sales. Old radio didn't have that particular extra cost.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[khellendros1984]

1) What does "not necessarily the case" mean, to you? To me, it means that the equipment is available, but it's not something that one carries around with oneself all the time.

I'll give you the point on digital broadcast radio; a copy of the bitstream should be easy to record. I tend to forget about its existence, since I don't have a receiver.

2) It's fine for non-audiophiles. Digital radio is transmitted at 48-128kbit/s in the U.S.using lossy compression anyhow, and it would still outperform FM, which is more than likely playing from digital audio sources anyhow, even for the analog transmissions.

Vinyl's a non sequitur here. How many people would be able to record to vinyl anyhow? And if they've got their own higher-quality recording of the music, then they aren't going to be listening to it on the radio (let alone recording it from there), so it's a moot point.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[tepples]

Even if there is "nothing morally wrong", a copyright infringement lawsuit can still bankrupt you.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[JohnnyMindcrime]

Your points are valid from your perspective, I cannot argue with them.

But from my perspective as a music lover and music consumer, I am extremely happy with the amount of good and interesting music that's out there for me to go and explore, and I am happy with the price it is offered to me at.

If anything, having no interest in the manufactured and mainstream crap means I have to search a bit harder to find what I want, that makes it all the more satisfying when I do find it.

To be honest, if they stopped making CDs tomorrow, I'd still have years and years of rooting through what CDs would be left out there anyway, I don't think digital downloads will ever be an issue for me.

No, I can't say anything to change it. The record companies know I'm here, I'm a middle-aged man with some disposable income, probably with his head rooted in the music of his youth, so they release lots of classic remasters for me to go and buy. End result is I am happy as a pig in shit.

But I'm probably not their target demographic, I'm too old and probably too fussy in my tastes. Therefore I'm not going to cover my monitor in spittle ranting about the wrongs of digital downloads - because ultimately they don't affect me and I can still do things my way.

But I do object to these sweeping statements that the music industry is somehow bad or evil in what it does. Like I said, for me it's doing a great job.

Re:Universal wants me to use YouTube more

[Karmashock]

As to you being happy with things, that does not address the sales statistics that herald the irrelevance of that position.

To "you" anything could be so. My comments were not about what you or any one person finds to be true or untrue.

My point was about an entire industry which is something beyond any individual's opinion.

In regards to sweeping statement I didn't say they were evil. And as to being bad... I said their business model has to be updated. Surely you must admit that they must change.

YOU might be happy with something but you will not live forever and if they are unable to associate with younger generations they die with you.

What is more, while you like your remasters, I suspect you don't buy as much music as someone that is building their music collection from scratch. You are contented with your memories and your existing collection far too much for them to be comfortable with you as a revenue source.

What is more, even amongst your generation you are unusual. You are a subset of a subset of a subset... and you're an expiring one. No offense. It comes for us all.

Please do not react emotionally to my argument. I am not an especially emotional person. My statements are logical/rational. I am making a rational argument. I am not attempting to attack your love or any other emotional nonsense. I have no interest in wounding your ego or undermining your belief systems.

My interest is in understanding my universe and accurately describing it.

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:I'm Torn.

[sjames]

Even in the old days, an album could go double platinum and still be 'recouping' and so no check for the band. Perhaps a kickstarter like thing for a tour or to produce an album released to contributors early (with the biggest contributors credited somewhere).

I'm not sure what the answer is, but album sales were never a big source of income for musicians.

Re:I'm Torn.

[Roblimo]

Put your band name & URL in your /. sig. If it was there I'd listen - and I've known to pay for music.

Re:I'm Torn.

[khchung]

If this translated to, say, a hundred sales on iTunes, well it'd be somethng.

For all the ridicule /.ers like to heap on Apple fans, at least those Apple fans are usually willing to pay for stuff.

The amount of money I spend on iTunes for content is comparable to the money I paid for Apple hardware, and is already way more than what I had ever spent on CD/DVD/etc combined.

Re:I'm Torn.

[sg_oneill]

I used to, but we haven't really got much in the way of that these days since Myspace shat the bed and our singer moved to the US. I should probably do something about it.

Re:I'm Torn.

[Half-pint HAL]

"Recouping" was basically another term for "being scammed by your label". Wasn't the digital revolution supposed to free small artists from the tyranny of the labels and allow them to keep their own profits? It's a bit of a Pyhrric victory -- "hooray we can keep our profits... and if we're lucky buy a bag of peanuts with them!"

Re:I'm Torn.

[Half-pint HAL]

Might I suggest that part of what has you torn is that you're on some level expecting the world to provide you with a comfortable living (possibly supported by past decades where some artists could make a lot of money doing what they did) whilst simultaneously aware of the fact that forcing resrictions on how people you don't even know can use technology is wrong.

Nope. First up, he's not trying to force any restrictions on anyone -- he's just saying he's not really getting any meaningful profit off it, and he wishes he was.

Secondly, even if he took his material off Spotify, that wouldn't be "restrictions on [using] technology", but restrictions on using his intellectual property, which is his prerogative.

Re:I'm Torn.

[sjames]

Agreed. The complete answer hasn't really been worked out yet. Part of it is that the old guard is doing it's best to keep the new small bands that won't deal with the devil from getting ahead. After all, once that happens, the gravy train is over.

Re:I'm Torn.

[Schnapple]

Wasn't the digital revolution supposed to free small artists from the tyranny of the labels and allow them to keep their own profits?

Where in the hell did you get that idea?

Re:I'm Torn.

[Half-pint HAL]

Tech evangelists. Bloody utopia-mongers.

The New Reality

[Irate Engineer]

The old model for music distribution:

1. A song gets played on the radio.

2. A listener hears the song and would like to listen to it on demand, so they head down to the album store and buy a CD or record.

3. Listener pays for product, leaves happy! Music!

4. Distribution label PROFITS!!! (though cut has to go to artist, agent, CD/record production, etc.. ).

The new model for music distribution:

1. Listener hears artist's music on Youtube, can play on demand for free, can contribute to artist directly!

2. ??? - sound of crickets chirping -

Not seeing the need for big labels anymore myself. They are trying to coerce money out of a system that is rapidly realizing this new reality. Good luck with that!

Re:The New Reality

[Roblimo]

Last week I bought an interesting version of Bach's 'Well Tempered Clavier from the artist online. Could have ripped it, but I like Ms. Ishikaza's work and want to support her.

Re:The New Reality

[Half-pint HAL]

But that recording's free -- it was prepaid on Kickstarter.

Re:The New Reality

[dave420]

The old model for the music industry:

1. A band/artist makes a record
2. The record label sells the record to the most people as possible
3. The record is played on radio
4. The artist plays live, and the advertisement from the record being played means people show up and buy tickets

The problems started when the record labels decided to turn the record from a advertising method into the commodity itself.

Re:The New Reality

[king neckbeard]

Thank you for your contribution.

Radio vs. jukebox

[tepples]

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.

Re:Music is dead anyway

[Half-pint HAL]

Only the big "stadium acts" profit from tours. For the average musician, a gig is little more than a promotional exercise to try to increase album sales.

What about prices

[ruir]

What about the concept of pricing iTunes movies and songs more fairly and to a point where people won't bother to pirate them. The prices of music and films are distorted, too expensive upon a perceived reality distortion film of the medias conglomerates and the market is maintained by customer intimidation and political pressure instead of the law of the offer and demand...things have to change. Thing is with prices by the cents of music and movies, iTunes and the likes could dominate the landscape of entertainment and be almost the sole exclusive providers. Going to the movies, and buying physical media for entertainment is an obsolete and dead concept, certainly not ecological and a big waste of natural resources and money.

Re:Music is dead anyway

[dave420]

If they're doing it wrong, sure. With decent management (from within or someone else), a profitable tour can be arranged.

They just really don't get it.

[trippin_efnet]

I don't know anyone who has pirated music since Spotify and the similar companies came about. Which means the companies are surely making more than before, at least in ad revenue.

Let them pull their catalog and watch piracy go up even more. The days where media companies get to pretend there is a finite supply of their product is over. The market knows that it costs basically nothing to distribute now. They're attempting to charge more than when there was a need for a physical product which needed a theater/cinema, packaging, shipping to a store, and to take up floor space in that store. Their product does not hold the same scarcity it once did. If they can't accept that, they're going to go out of business..

If they want to compete now, they need to price accordingly. These media companies can scream death of creativity due to piracy all they want, people created and performed art long before these vampiric companies existed and they will create and perform long after they're gone.

PS: If I were them, I would buy up the distribution channels which at home people use to access my product and put a chokepoint there in order to make my product scarce again.
Oh, wait, they're doing exactly that... Comcast and TimeWarner are both owned by massive media companies.

If they're paying the contracted amount...

[mattack2]

As long as Spotify is paying the licensed amount, Universal has no say in it.. until the next contract negotiations.

(I generally don't use ANY of these streaming services, btw.. because of the ads and limited amount of skips.. in THEORY I'd love to find a lot of new similar music to what I have, but I seem to usually already own the various things it thinks are similar to the bands I choose.)

How is that "Free" if youtube pays for it?

[Kartu]

Youtube (ok, Google) pays Universal for each view...
If you wonder, how much it is: GEMA (German MAFIAA) demanded 2 digit cent per view (!!!) which pissed off youtube to a point they said, nope, we better not play anything covered by GEMA in Germany at all.

Re:How is that "Free" if youtube pays for it?

[Karmashock]

So youtube doesn't pay 2 cents per view.