Comments on: Bad Blood: “Taylor Swift” vs. Spotify

By: Spotify vs. Taylor Swift - Or is it Really? - Random Life Music

Spotify vs. Taylor Swift - Or is it Really? - Random Life Music — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 16:08:01 +0000

[…] debates frame it as Spotify vs. Taylor Swift, but it seems it’s more like Spotify vs. Big Machine, the record label. Sadly, artists and consumers are being dragged into the crossfire in an already […]

By: Nick Smith

Nick Smith — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 01:13:25 +0000

I don’t feel a tremendous amount of sympathy for Spotify. Not that I like to side with mainstream record labels, but they’re well within their rights to handle their IP how they see fit. They don’t owe Spotify streaming rights just because Spotify and its users really really want them. The popularity of streaming does not require somebody to allow their music to be streamed.

Big Machine is in the business of selling records. If they had let it go to Spotify, I probably would have just listened to the record on Spotify. But they did not, and I really wanted to hear it, so I plopped down 12 bucks and bought it in iTunes. I don’t imagine that I am anywhere close to being alone in my decision-making process. That seems to me like it was a good decision in terms of their bottom line.

For Spotify to play the poor-me and how-dare-they-take-our-tunes-away just feels bogus to me. Artists see a comically small amount of royalties from allowing Spotify to stream their music. It is not a meaningful source of revenue in itself, and Spotify makes wads of cash selling subscriptions and advertising to access their art. Its primary utility to musicians who allow their music on there is as a marketing tool, helping to sell concert tickets, merchandise, and, to an obviously lesser extent, records.

Taylor Swift’s brand has long since reached a stage in her career where the boost in visibility it might get from letting you stream the new record is not going to make up for the potential lost record sales from releasing it for free streaming simultaneously with its widespread release. She’s a dinosaur; one of the last musicians who can induce a critical mass of people to spend their money on records. She has achieved an old-school form of success in the music industry that is not dependent on the streaming population. It only makes sense that her business choices reflect that.

By: Myles McNutt

Myles McNutt — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 19:17:25 +0000

Great point—this is largely unrepresentative of the broader philosophical argument regarding streaming, and yet is going to become the largest point of conflict between them. Big Machine tries to sell itself as a smaller label based on its current independence, but it is a major smaller label, and therefore is negotiating this on distinct terms to both larger majors and the indies you mention.

The question becomes how this conflict can be claimed by smaller artists, and by the labels who represent them. They don’t have this kind of leverage, and therefore are going to need to participate in this discourse in other ways. The ability for smaller bands to draft into this conversation will be crucial to how the model’s definition of sustainability is determined.

By: Dackquiri

Dackquiri — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 19:05:24 +0000

It’s also a story that focuses on an isolated artist who is in a place to sell so many albums this looks like wringing the fanbase for pennies. (Granted, this is a major label, and that’s generally not something any of them are adverse to, but there’s more to it than that.) 1989 was gonna make bank, Spotify or no, so this looks petty, but the stand labels are taking—while not unrelated to greed—is also about smaller bands. And how in decreasing the revenue from recorded music, it *increases* the amount of notoriety an act needs to make signing them, recording, producing, releasing and promoting their record worth the financial gamble. It will increase the size of fanbase an artist will need to accrue to be worth the investment, and, for major labels (but I’m seeing it apply to some indies as well) it will increase the likelihood they’ll strong-arm the act into pop crossover instead of expanding their fanbase at its core.

Streaming is very much something the public wants. It’s very clear music consumption is heading towards that realm. But like many new consumer trends, we’ve dove into it headfirst without first crafting a sustainable model in the context of the industry at large.