Spotify: What is the incentive to buy music?

Post by **Encuentro** » Mon Feb 06, 2012 8:57 pm

I recently registered for Spotify. Virtually every album for virtually every artist is available for free. What will be the incentive for the majority of music fans to buy music? The hardcore fans will continue to buy music, but the more casual fans will simply listen to the music online for free. How will this effect how artists produce music knowing that the majority of fans will not be paying for it?

Post by **Roughie** » Mon Feb 06, 2012 9:07 pm

Well I think something will change, what that is, I don't know. As an artist myself I am against illegal copying etc but at the same tiime I am a hypocrite as I have plenty of Doors bootlegs etc. I only do that for the Doors and no-one else but still...

Post by **Encuentro** » Mon Feb 06, 2012 9:23 pm

Roughie wrote:Well I think something will change, what that is, I don't know. As an artist myself I am against illegal copying etc but at the same tiime I am a hypocrite as I have plenty of Doors bootlegs etc. I only do that for the Doors and no-one else but still...

That's cool, Roughie. I'm opposed to illegal file sharing sites as well, but Spotify is legal as far as I know. There are similar legal sites such as Slacker Radio and Grooveshark. The Doors made The Wasp (Instrumental) available exclusively through Spotify. Virtually any album you want to listen to is available for free, and it's legal. I'm wondering how artists, especially artists who can no longer make money from touring, will continue to make significant money from their music.

Post by **Roughie** » Mon Feb 06, 2012 9:26 pm

Encuentro wrote:
Roughie wrote:Well I think something will change, what that is, I don't know. As an artist myself I am against illegal copying etc but at the same tiime I am a hypocrite as I have plenty of Doors bootlegs etc. I only do that for the Doors and no-one else but still...
That's cool, Roughie. I'm opposed to illegal file sharing sites as well, but Spotify is legal as far as I know. There are similar legal sites such as Slacker Radio and Grooveshark. The Doors made The Wasp (Instrumental) available exclusively through Spotify. Virtually any album you want to listen to is available for free, and it's legal. I'm wondering how artists, especially artists who can no longer make money from touring, will continue to make significant money from their music.

I wonder how it is legal?

I guess if it is legal then artists aren't gonna make much money at all.

Post by **jamestkirk** » Mon Feb 06, 2012 9:41 pm

The only fair way to regulate those sites is for them to pay a fee for playing an album, just as a radio station must pay to play a song.

I wonder if they do already. Most play-for-free or watch-for-free sites run ads, either at the beginning of the video or in the margins, so maybe they also pay a fee to the artists/record companies/film companies.

I get free crosswords from LA Times online, and they run a 30 second spot ad before you can d/l... so that is good for the newspapers (since they are struggling so), & I am happy.

There is a way to do it fairly, without turning society into a "1984" kind of totalitarian scenario.

Post by **Encuentro** » Mon Feb 06, 2012 10:29 pm

Apparently, as James pointed out, artists are compensated for streaming the music. The money comes from advertisements for those who use the site for free and fees for premium subscriptions. Those who choose to pay a fee for a premium subscription aren't exposed to advertisements, get higher bitrate streams, whatever that means, have offline access to music and can listen to the music on their mobile devices.

Criticism

The service has come under fire for failing to compensate independent artists fairly. Helienne Lindvall of The Guardian reported that "indie labels... as opposed to the majors and Merlin members, receive no advance, receive no minimum per stream and only get a 50% share of ad revenue on a pro-rata basis."[88] Swedish musician Magnus Uggla wanted to pull his music from the service, stating that after six months he'd only earned "what a mediocre busker could earn in a day".[89] Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported in 2009 that record label Racing Junior had only earned NOK 19 ($3.00 USD) after their artists had been streamed over 55,100 times.[90] According to an infographic by David McCandless, an independent artist on Spotify would need over four million streams per month to earn US$1,160.[91] Luke Lewis of NME points to problems with the Spotify business model, saying he was "convinced the 'free' aspect of Spotify is unsustainable" and that if "Spotify is to have a future, it needs to be a viable business".[92]

In September 2011, Brooklyn-based independent label Projekt Records entered a public disagreement with Spotify, stating "In the world I want to live in, I envision artists fairly compensated for their creations, because we (the audience) believe in the value of what artists create. The artist's passion, dedication and expression is respected and rewarded. Spotify is NOT a service that does this. Projekt will not be part of this unprincipled concept." [93]

Spotify contains digital rights management and is therefore identified by Defective by Design, a Free Software Foundation campaign, as "defective by design." Moreover, for using the service, proprietary software needs to be installed on the user's computer.[94]

A 2011 blog post alleged that the higher 320 kbit/s bitrate supposedly available to Premium subscribers was in reality only available on around 30% of tracks.[60] A large majority of the content was actually streamed in 160 kbit/s.[60] However, the blog post was updated with a message from Spotify saying that 99.9% of its library was available at 320 kbit/s.

The usefulness of Spotify for listening to classical music has been criticised, because playback is not gapless (there is a slight pause between tracks), which affects much classical music. The search function has also been criticised.[95] This is also a problem in other types of music, including popular music, where some albums are intended to be listened to without gaps.[96]

Spotify has also been criticised for bugs in the Android version, which prevents the use of offline playlist functionality on Honeycomb-based devices.[97]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify

Post by **universalmind69** » Mon Feb 06, 2012 10:40 pm

Spotify is definetly legal, as mentioned above... there has however been controversies regarding the actual level of compensation received by some of the artists on there though.
But with these kinds of services I think there will always be a certain amount of criticism/unsatisfied artists complaining about their level of received compensation... some of it might be justified, while other complaints might be due to an overly exaggerated sense of importance and monetary worth on the artists side.

They pay artists/record companies, they run ads and have several restrictions for free accounts-- to get rid of those + to get access to several other perks such as higher quality streams, offline availability etc. you have to subscribe for a montly fee.

I have a free account myself, rarely use it.

Post by **Roughie** » Tue Feb 07, 2012 2:46 am

Thanks for the extra info.