The music worlds breathe was taken away this weekend after reading that even though Lady GaGa had over a million streams on Spotify, she received $167 in compensation. It has long been thought that since torrents provided a superior interface to get music that is what drives many "pirates" to them. The great hope in Spotify is that there would finally be a user interface that was superior to the various torrent sites so people would legally acquire music and artists would get paid. Now that it seems that the latter part of that statement is not true, what are we to do?
With the hype surrounding Spotify's US launch it seems inevitable it will become insanely popular, giving them even more leverage in the negotiations between labels and copyright holders. Are we about to see a new monopoly come into being where one single corporation will have all the bargaining chips as to what rights artists and labels have? Are we going to see the music industry version of too big to fail? Before this US launch it may be time to pressure Spotify to convey some clear details on how they will be compensating us all. Till now, things have been hazy at best and a response to the Lady GaGa claim may indeed be in order before any of us choose to support this service further. This blog has surely been guilty of hyping this service to death, but until we hear some real talk about how artists are going to be compensated, that will cease. I hope you all will do the same and no longer praise this service until we have answers of how Spotify intends to make a sustainable model for music industry growth and their service's involvement in that.
With the hype surrounding Spotify's US launch it seems inevitable it will become insanely popular, giving them even more leverage in the negotiations between labels and copyright holders. Are we about to see a new monopoly come into being where one single corporation will have all the bargaining chips as to what rights artists and labels have? Are we going to see the music industry version of too big to fail? Before this US launch it may be time to pressure Spotify to convey some clear details on how they will be compensating us all. Till now, things have been hazy at best and a response to the Lady GaGa claim may indeed be in order before any of us choose to support this service further. This blog has surely been guilty of hyping this service to death, but until we hear some real talk about how artists are going to be compensated, that will cease. I hope you all will do the same and no longer praise this service until we have answers of how Spotify intends to make a sustainable model for music industry growth and their service's involvement in that.
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