With Spotify you can listen to any track (that’s on there) any time. In what way is this comparable to radio? It’s more an internet jukebox that obviates adding new titles to a record collection and so should compensate the artist for their reduced record sales.

My conception of radio: audio stream curated by some other person, who plays what they want when they want. It is ephemeral and so “current” and thus can be useful to publicise the work of an artist in hope of sales. Same for any PRS-style plays such as at a cafe etc.

My point is that to the listener, Spotify does not replace radio; it replaces recording purchasing with all-you-can-eat subscription. So surely when evaluating the value to the musicians you should compare the revenue from Spotify with the revenue from recording sales, not with radio plays.

As a Spotify subscriber I had imagined my cash finds its way to the musicians I listen to. There needs to be a better channel for that, and something like Spotify could be it. This article shows this is not happening.

And I don’t see how Open/Premium/Unlimited makes much difference to that. None of them are any more like radio than the other. Only thing is Unlimited obviates record purchase completely because it works offline.

Please tell me if I have the wrong end of the stick here. I’m just trying to make the right comparison!

It seems the dubious practice of buying a CD then ripping it and sharing with friends earns the artist more money than if all those friends use Spotify to listen to it constantly for months. Right?

also, what do you think about less popular music on indies? where one sale means a hell of a lot more proportionally? 50’000 listens for someone small would be amazing, but on spotify it would make them literally a few pence, if that!

Another development that caught my eye recently was Apple’s purchase of the music streaming site Lala.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/01/15/arts/entertainment-us-mergers.html?pagewanted=all

At the moment, iTunes (for example) usually sells tracks for .99 US cents for a permanent download. If iTunes starts offering things like custom streaming options, then they might sell the right to always stream that same track for (guessing) only .10 cents. The customer would not download the track or own it, but always be able to call up a specific track anytime on their iTunes device, forever.

The rates paid to labels or musicians (if they own their music) for streaming are minimal compared to the rates for permanent downloads.

For the current style of .99 permanent download, (I think), iTunes pays .79 US cents to the label or aggregator, which then has to pay mechanical royalties of about .9 cents, and then artist royalties (if they do that at all).

For the sale of a streaming track (in the Lala/iTunes style), they would probably pay fractions of peanuts to the rights holders.

What I really doubt is that the rights collection organizations can really keep track of all of this. PRS, GEMA, Harry Fox, et al will be hard pressed to find a system to track all of the billions of streams, even though everything is encoded. They will be relying on the accounting procedures and goodwill of Spotify, Lulu, etc to report things accurately.

Sorry for the slightly off-topic detour. To get back on topic, I would say streaming services: good. Yes, stream our music—get it out there. And, yes we can’t forget that streaming services are also businesses trying to make money from and with all of their business partners.

The US numbers for CD sales were down significantly and there was no way downloads made up the slack

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123075988836646491.html

I think they are still dealing overall with a decline again in 2009, the first half-year, particularly in ther US will have been very slack.

I presume that coyness is why the figures from the collection agencies are so late. They only have press departments capable of waliking tall while talking about success and they don’t have the moral fibre or the incentive to disclose poor numbers.

The 2008/9 Gema Annual report talks clearly – again without any numbers produced beyond 2007 – about numbers in decline, and about how they will be making cost reductions but feel a need to remind any concerned readers that they are “successful and financially sound”

http://www.gema.de/fileadmin/inhaltsdateien/presse/Publikationen/Jahrbuecher/Jahrbuch_08_09/Vorwort_JB_08_09.pdf

The current round of MCPS-PRS fee increases in live music venues is surely a defence against the downtrend, to lower volumes of royalties.