

200+ Labels Withdraw Their Music From Spotify and Other Streaming Services - mikeknoop
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/11/200-labels-withdraw-their-music-from-spotify-are-its-fortunes-unravelling/all/1

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mikeknoop
Spotify's response is spot-on:

 _“In addition, ‘revenue per stream’ totally misses the point when considering
the value generated by Spotify. The relevant metrics are: 1) how many people
are being monetized by Spotify; 2) who these people are (usually young people
previously on pirate services which generate nothing for artists and
rightsholders); and 3) how much revenue per user Spotify generates for
rightsholders._

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jsz0
The number of people being monetized by Spotify is great for the aggregated
interests of all the labels on the service but may be meaningless to
individual labels/artists. If they are indeed losing record sales and Spotify
isn't making up for the difference it must be pretty hard to justify staying
there. The argument about piracy could be weak too depending on how many
pirates go on to buy the music. 1000 streams for 1 cent each = $10 vs. 10,000
downloads that turns into just 2 sales $10 each = $20. (fake made up numbers
but they illustrate the point)

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eric-hu
To play the devil's advocate in favor of mikeknoop's comment:

The claim is

(a - n) + b < a : n > 0

a: record sales (a-n): record sales minus would-be sales due to spotify b:
additional profit spotify generates from would-be piraters

The fallacy (IMO) of the label is that "a-n + b" is in all situations less
than "a". They're deciding that it's less profitable to distribute content
with spotify without examining what "b" is.

You may very well be right that a spotify-license system is less profitable. I
think it's jumping to conclusions to decide this, though. "b" (the profit
generated from would-be piraters) is a study-able quantity, and should be
measured before making any claim.

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canes123456
Why are we looking at how much they make per play? $120 a year is still more
than a would spend music before rdio. I assume the average customer spends
less than $120. How is this not more profitable then selling discs?

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mikeknoop
I was spending nowhere near $120/yr on music previously and now I am about to
eagerly pay just that via Spotify. Obviously labels/artists are only seeing a
certain percentage of that but could easily get around it by setting up their
OWN equally good streaming service to mirror Spotify et. al. and charge the
same/more and take the entire cut.

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neilrahilly
They had to do a study to find out streaming is a substitute for other forms
of music distribution? Of course it is. Raise the price, but please don't make
me go back to less covenient systems (e.g., iTunes, bittorrent, CDs, etc.). It
would be like insisting that you're only releasing 8-track. Fine, but I'll
find something else to listen to that doesn't force me to deal with an
antiquated hassle.

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gkoberger
This is why SOPA exists. Rather than give users an easy way to listen to music
legally, content holders are making downloading the only viable option and
then using the government as their muscle.

I have never pirated anything that was available on Rdio/Netflix/Hulu.

~~~
kittxkat
"I have never pirated anything that was available on Rdio/Netflix/Hulu."

Now _that_ is exactly how it should work.

I wish I could say the same, but sadly not any of those services are available
overseas. I really wish they could finally open up for everyone, my money's
just waiting to be spent on Netflix!

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terinjokes
I spent the most on physical album sales (majority of that being vinyl
records) when I worked for a streaming music company.

I agree with some of the commenters, being able to listen to those artists,
really helped in making the decision to spend my hard earned cash. I realize
I'm in the minority, but there are sales being done as a direct result of
artists being on these streaming services.

And for the record, I would listen to Coldplay, thank you very much. ;)

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Tycho
_Recent top-sellers like Coldplay and Adele have actively avoided Spotify for
their newest albums, because their management know the record will sell widely
regardless and Spotify’s audience isn’t likely to be especially keen on those
artists anyway._

Seems dubious. I'd expect Coldplay and Adele to be extremely popular with
Spotify users.

Anyway, I'm not surprised labels are withdrawing from Spotify. It's
outrageously cheap.

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joejohnson
I'm unclear from this article which labels pulled their content? Can anyone
point me to a list of artists that are no longer available?

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mikeryan
Its one distributor, with about ~280 labels, these are likely niche and
smaller labels. I wouldn't be surprised if many weren't less then 10 artists
(some likely only one artist)

<http://www.stholdings.co.uk/label_list/>

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ra
That's generally the stuff I like to listen to though.

EDIT: Not that I'm about to go and hunt down the CD's, I probably wouldn't
have heard of most of the artists if it were not for streaming services that
facilitate discovery.

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marknutter
Funny, piratebay.org still works...

