In a blog post music streaming service Spotify announced that it is limiting its free users listening time to 10 hours per month and a maximum of 5 listens of a particular track in each month however, the free service will still contain adverts.
When Spotify launched it, and other similar services, was heralded as the saviour of the music industry, a way to maintain massive audiences and the artists still get paid and just last month they reported their millionth paying user and the business is being given ever increasing valuations, but with this announcement, Spotify may be about to shoot the music industry in the foot.
However, with this time limit being imposed from 1st May, many of the 5 million free users may return to piracy, the thing which is killing the music industry. So, not only are Spotify at risk of collapsing their own business (because when user-ship drop, so will ad revenues) they may also end up putting another death knell in the music industries coffin.
The music industries problems may run deep, but Spotify had a genuine opportunity to reverse the decline in the non-mainstream, however that opportunity may just have been squandered by yet another money grabbing business that surrounds music.
"piracy, the thing which is killing the music industry."
ReplyDeletePiracy isn't killing the music industry any more than Spotify is - Spotify pays a pittance (of the order 1/10th of 1p or less per play) to artists (and not much more to the label).
Piracy (and Spotify) are good, at least for small-time artists, because they increase the number of people who hear them, like their stuff, and buy their albums. Sure, maybe there's a small negative effect on the bottom line of megarich, famous artists and massive record companies. But who cares about them? The majority of people involved in music are better off for piracy.