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Spotify Raises $526 Million As Apple Charges Into Streaming
An anonymous reader writes: Spotify has raised an enormous $526 million in funding to fight off Apple's new Apple Music subscription service. As part of the funding round, European carrier TeliaSonera is responsible for $115 million. The music service now has 20 million paying subscribers and 75 million monthly active users, doubling the subscriber base since May of 2014. The LA Times reports: "U.S. companies participating in the Spotify funding include Halcyon Asset Management, GSV Capital, D.E. Shaw & Co., Technology Crossover Ventures, Northzone and P. Schoenfeld Asset Management, said the person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to comment publicly. British investment firms Baillie Gifford, Lansdowne Partners and Rinkelberg Capital, along with Canadian hedge funds Senvest Capital and Discovery Capital Management also took part. In a statement disclosing its investment, TeliaSonera said it would work with Spotify to come up with innovations in media distribution, customer insights, data analytics and advertising."
Techies trying to be techy with money raising?
Dyslexics trying to be dyslexy with article reading?
I don't stream music except via internet radio, but I can see this as a good sign for upcoming competition. What I don't see will be any change for the small working musician in the pie. These are services to provide data and harvest data from users, not benevolent online record stores. I also like how Apple is reinventing Shoutcast but getting people to pay for it.
No thanks guys. Long live freeform, listener supported WFMU.
you want money you have to play live. the era of living off royalties, reselling your music in new formats and greatest hits collections is over
I really don't have much else to say....
Spotify raises $526m. Apple as of earlier this year had $178b in cash reserves. Now obviously Apple isn't going to spend all it's reserves, but you're going to need a lot more than that money to win a fight against Apple.
They're going to pay off the music cartels to convince them to give Spotify a few more months of life before they cave in or get bought out, of course.
Half a billion dollars will satisfy the RIAA's greed for about 6 months.
I'm trying to figure out the benefits here. I have amazon prime so I get free music already. Sure I can't listen to the white album at work, but I get the majority of what I want. So for them to enter the market they need to do it 2x as good as the next guy or at 1/2 the price. I don't see either happening
They could use some help on metrics. I use the free (ad-supported) version, and despite a pretty clear avoidance of Pop/Hip-hop or Rap, almost all of the external ads (ie not for upgrading to "premium") are for artists solidly in those genres. It wouldn't take a genius piece of software to make some attempt at focusing the ads. Likewise, use my "skip" history in the rare cases that I do try one of their premade (sorry, "curated") playlists--pretty much entirely those genres.
Likewise, stop fucking up the interface!! (play queue, 3rd party integration, etc)
Having seen the terms in Sony's contract, I don't envy their position--they'll likely burn through that cash pretty quick. But due to their poor software implementation, it's hard for me to feel bad for them.
Roll your own music service to any of your devices using the media you already own! No monthly fees, no features always being added, invite family/friends, and you control the data!
My brother is in an indie band that played rockfest kc this year {about 55k people attended} and toped at 41 on cmj chart. The money is in merchandising not digital sales or live events {although a lot of merch is sold at live events}. They sound successful but honestly can't afford to quit their day jobs.
Is Live365 dead after Pandora, Spotify, Apple streaming?
Just wondering if it makes any more sense to broadcast on Live365... I'm guessing not anymore
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
... perhaps now they can hire at least one person to work on the many long-standing issues with their interface. It shouldn't be too difficult; media players all the way back to the original Winamp had features that Spotify is still lacking.
Apple wants all the big music publishers to cease allowing any free streaming of music. Apple pushing music labels to kill free Spotify streaming ahead of Beats relaunch
Why Apple wants to end the era of free music streaming
Hah, suckers! I listen to Grooveshark!
Dark Reflection
well you can download tracks for offline listening (i do this on my cell phone for conserving bandwidth)
You can also use audacity to make mp3's out of what you're listening to. But I somehow doubt spotify would approve of that use case.
Merchandizing being the place bands get their money, has been true for as long as I can remember - Tours and live-gigs are simply a way to bring the merchandize to the buyers.
Unless you have the power of commercial radio behind you and merchandise in every mall and record store, chances are your not making squat.
"They" need it? The musicians who want it, already have it. They'll sell you music. Buy it from them.
And if you simply must stream it, instead of playing it from local storage, then stream it from your file server.
Don't have a file server? Bad nerd!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
... while at the same time giving zero to artists, but intends to make it up on volume. Another $526 million from investors will enable it to build out still more volume while offering even less to artists. Why doesn't it just buy tulip futures on margin and have done with it?
you want money you have to play live. the era of living off royalties, reselling your music in new formats and greatest hits collections is over
That era never existed for most artists, even large, well known ones. The money has always been in live shows, merch, and more recently licensing.
Don't forget royalties to copyright holders/labels (although not necessarily artists) -- that's the biggest chunk of expenditure.
What's spotify?
Is this a bad thing? I mean I hear musicians complain all the time about not making enough money, but what is the appropriate amount of income for someone effectively doing their hobby part-time?
That would be the part you didn't understand, music isn't a hobby for a recording artist. What you have are indie artists putting in full time hours plus working a regular full time job, sometimes their regular job is related to music but most of them just have regular jobs. They travel and sometimes a show doesn't even cover their costs even though there are 1k people attending.
Records are usually sold as a collectors item they can be very expensive to have cut, my brother is trying to find a good supplier that isn't going to break the bank.
That would be the part you didn't understand, music isn't a hobby for a recording artist.
Yes it is. They might try to convince you otherwise, but I'm a hobby musician, know people in bands etc Even managed to work at a few festivals for some big international acts, and have minor experience in a studio
A good musician can write and record a song in a week. Why should I pay royalties for 75 years for this amount of effort?
if all you do is play some local festivals, events, bars, etc.. have a few t-shirts and a home studio recording you can even be loved locally but you are not the person I'm referring to.
I'm talking about the guys that write songs, record albums, do or commission cover art, merchandise designs, promotional art, music videos, have supply chains, promoters, and administrative overhead, tour for months at a time, do crap music blog interviews, internet radio shows, college and commercial radio shows, magazine interviews.
But you said recording artists? If you are a musician, there is still a place in the new world for you. If you are one of the supporting services that only exist because of the outdated 20th century business model then too bad. Change or die.
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