Spotify's power comes from more than its ubiquity. Pop music, the kind that charts (and the only kind labels care about), is way more commodified than TV shows. If Sony were to make a streaming service with just their music and leave Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon/etc, their artists would simply fail to chart ever again.
The advantage of a single streaming service with all the songs is also much greater than one with all the shows or movies. Nobody puts Netflix on "shuffle" or lets it play random episodes based on what they've watched in the past, but those are some of Spotify's biggest features. Its user shareable playlists also increase lock-in, along with other network effects. It's such a huge advantage to be able to play anything (or almost anything), I don't see how a service with a limited selection could compete.
I don't see any way for the labels to get out of the streaming age beyond serious anticompetitive collusion, and even then people would go back to piracy. Frankly, it couldn't happen to a nicer group of folks.
I mostly agree with you there. If you look at pop music as a whole, it's impossible to attack them directly.
But I don't think that the moat could never be broken. You have many people that consume music as background noises. But you also have many people that are passionate about the music they listen to and would like to have another way to support their artist of choices other than going to concerts (see vinyl revival etc).
My recipe to break the moat:
- choose a genre some people care strongly about (for me, that was classical)
- make a platform that offer a better UX for that genre, and have them pay for their music (those consumer are happy because better UX and they feel they actually support the artist they like)
- progressively signup labels by showing there is more money on your platform than on streaming services, they will progressively remove more and more of their catalog from streaming services if they were on them.
- once the model is proven on that genre, move to another (jazz, serious pop etc)
- as time goes by, the value of your service increase and while the value of the streaming services is lowered due to their catalog shrinking.
While this might be a fantasy, the truth is that today system continue to reward popular artists only, niche genre artists can't make a living from streaming. If a solution arises for them, they will come progressively, and over time it will weaken the streaming service moat.
> make a platform that offer a better UX for that genre, and have them pay for their music (those consumer are happy because better UX and they feel they actually support the artist they like)
Why would consumers not just pay for physical media like CDs/Vinyl/etc. if they prefer owning things?
I also lack the vision to see what could ultimately replace streaming as the primary delivery mechanism for music. It delivers an ongoing revenue stream, the monthly nature of which beats the old "put it out in a new format every few years so everyone has to rebuy everything" in terms of cash flow, although obviously not in overall revenue.
I could definitely see streaming wars in music happening like they are in video, although so far the music labels are content to watch the video labels hurt each other. But consider: Spotify's payouts are infamously low, lower than Google's or Apple's and I can imagine some labels deciding they can do better by providing their own streaming app. Since it's only a few labels, each will believe they have enough of a library to draw subscribers, and away we'll go.
But still: aside from the margins and market share concerns, what delivers a steadier income than streaming?
Streaming doesn't mean they can't experiment with additional revenue streams, including physical media sales and licensing opportunities, but it's hard to imagine something displacing streaming as a concept to the degree which streaming has displaced physical media sales.
The idea was to create a true streaming service in term of UX. All the same features as you are used to, except you start with the empty catalog and you purchase individual albums and you get the streaming service for free forever (no subscription). The service operating cost being funded by newer purchase. That's why I'm talking about Steam as the model, it's how they operate: you have access to your library forever even if you only pay for games once. (And mostly, you never play much to most of your purchases).
The steady income of subscription service is nice for the streaming platform but it's not nice for the classical music artists: they receive nothing.
I think bandcamp shows that there are people who still want to purchase and download a digital version and contribute directly to artists (on top of purchasing physical media).
I personally, want a lossless version that I can archive, have on my offline portable music player, stream to my phone, and stream through jellyfin to my stereo.
That fits better to the style of music I listen to, and how _I_ listen to music (I don't shuffle and listen to full albums only)
> Pop music, the kind that charts (and the only kind labels care about), is way more commodified than TV shows.
> Nobody puts Netflix on "shuffle" or lets it play random episodes based on what they've watched in the past
Not convinced. People used to watch TV the way they listened to the radio - turn it on to whatever's on and mostly ignore it. It's not the current dynamic but I don't think that's an immutable law of nature.
The advantage of a single streaming service with all the songs is also much greater than one with all the shows or movies. Nobody puts Netflix on "shuffle" or lets it play random episodes based on what they've watched in the past, but those are some of Spotify's biggest features. Its user shareable playlists also increase lock-in, along with other network effects. It's such a huge advantage to be able to play anything (or almost anything), I don't see how a service with a limited selection could compete.
I don't see any way for the labels to get out of the streaming age beyond serious anticompetitive collusion, and even then people would go back to piracy. Frankly, it couldn't happen to a nicer group of folks.