$10/month for infinite access to all music ever created just isn't reasonable. And the ad revenue from a majority free user base for infinite access to all music ever created is definitely unreasonable.
It's hard to argue with th connivence factor. However right now Spotify is destroying an existing model, not paying artists, and losing money hand over fist. It's lose/lose/lose. I'd rather consumers just pirate the music that way they at least know they aren't supporting the artists.
But its not $10 for all music ever created any more than its $15 for all the food on the buffet at Golden Corral. Its all you can eat, not all the food. There's only so much music that can stream through one set of speakers in a month.
Blind Pilot was half the OP's playlist. They'd get $5. How many artists would kill to get $5/month from their fans?
The real problem is that Blind Pilot might have gotten a whole penny from the OP's month of patronage. That's the part of the system that's broken. The part where fans can choose from all the artists that have ever created is a feature (and a damn good one), not a bug.
I'm starting to think that beyond "not pirating", we have some moral responsibility to make sure that the money we do "pay" for our music actually makes it through to the creator of that music, otherwise we're just buying moral absolution from immoral middle-men along with some (lazy) convenience.
I'd imagine you could create some "fair" kind of Spotify clone where half the money go to artists and half the money go to the service. The streaming know what music it plays, so it would be easy to bill. It just need someone to do that, and I'm not sure the general public cares about fairness.
All music ever created? I cringe when I read stuff like that.
I'm sorry, but this is not simply nitpicking. We will change our perception of music history and music itself if we fool ourselves that what these outlets carry is the entire history of music. I'd say around 40% of the music that I have on my HDDs are not available on Spotify. That's just guesstimating, it could be even higher.
Especially if you consider performances that didn't get recorded for one reason or another. All music on the four or five majors that has seen a CD release in the US? Yes, this is fairly reasonable.
> $10/month for infinite access to all music ever created just isn't reasonable.
Why not? Most people go through a period of their life where they buy lots of albums, then they stop altogether. Flattening that out to be $10/month forever, divvied across artist based on content, would be a net win for everyone.
Then how unreasonable is $0/month for radio? I'm happy there's people who can look at services like Spotify and Rdio critically, but I don't think appeals to intuition like "that can't be right?!" help us much.
Because radio is not a substitute for recorded music. The inability to choose what you're listening to was always the stick that compelled listeners to purchase a recording. If you have Spotify, there is no reason to ever purchase that music in a download store.
Fast, reliable, and unmetered wireless is by no means ubiquitous. There is still the benefit of being able to play offline, burn to CD for the car, share with friends, etc.
Admittedly, the incentive to want offline music may continue to diminish over time.
Radio may be far more interesting that you expect. Once upon a time you had Payola[1] where radio plays were designed to influence record sales in a nontransparent way. Now you have the issue of consolidation where you'd have no idea which plays were influenced by royalties etc.
Anyway, my point is that your comment could be interpreted to mean that radio is democratic and it is a democratic way for meritorious music to be elevated.
By democratic I don't mean anything more virtuous than screaming masses, but I don't think commercial radio even rises to that.
Anyway, I have to read more to get an overview of how Spotify and others compensate the talent that makes content, or even cheat them, but I also want to make sure that popular radio isn't treated like something we'd prefer.
Because there is not such a thing like $0/month for radio, as you are forced to hear ads, and the advertisers pay for it, and you are forced the songs you hear, witch some people paying for controlling it.
Yes, in the old days some companies controlled which music was heard and which not, and those gatekeepers were not as cheap as you thing.
Radio is like an ad service for the music industry, where you listen to demo tracks and hopefully buy the full album. Rdio and Spotify give you full access to the end product for virtually nothing. It has totally screwed up the perceived value of albums.
I might be a minority, but I'm paying more for music with Spotify than I've ever done buying CDs. (I do pay $16.50 a month, being in Norway). Doesn't seem all that unreasonable given my habits.
Exactly. It's also pretty dangerous since their users probably feel like doing the right thing by going with Spotify and ditching pirating. Practically it doesn't really matter though if those two are the only options many users will consider.
Exactly. I've got an Rdio subscription but I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. As a small label owner where we put in more investment than we've ever gotten out, it's crazy to see a thousand streams generating a couple of pounds given that those are all lost sales... but you think 'ah well, at least people are listening to it'.
Also, as a commenter below noted, pay-what-you-want is not new at all. Off the top of my head The Crimea shifted about 100,000 free downloads of their second LP after leaving Warners, quite a bit before In Rainbows.[0] As a second aside, I interviewed a pretty big artist a year or so after whose backing band knew Radiohead and, though this is hearsay obviously, they suggested the reason In Rainbows wasn't toured much beyond festivals was lack of tour support capital. I always sort of suspected that they fudged the numbers on sales/profit for that record, so that could be an indicator, who knows.
It's hard to argue with th connivence factor. However right now Spotify is destroying an existing model, not paying artists, and losing money hand over fist. It's lose/lose/lose. I'd rather consumers just pirate the music that way they at least know they aren't supporting the artists.