Warner’s Mistakes

So apparently Warner have decided that streaming services aren’t part of the future of music online after all.

From the BBC website article:

” Warner chief executive Edgar Bronfman Jr said: “Free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry and as far as Warner Music is concerned will not be licensed.
“The ‘get all your music you want for free, and then maybe with a few bells and whistles we can move you to a premium price’ strategy is not the kind of approach to business that we will be supporting in the future.” “

Now, that’s not a lot to go on, so please bear that in mind as I write.

However, here are a few mistakes that seem apparent from Warner’s position as expressed in the article.

  • ‘Listen to all the music you want for free’ is not the same as ‘get all the music you want for free’ – streaming ≠ ownership, and portability is a chargeable commodity. Hence the reason I describe Spotify Lite as on-demand radio.
  • ‘Net positive for the industry’ is an utterly spurious metric. Why should any one way of accessing music be ‘net positive for the industry?’ especially one that is an awesome discovery platform that costs neither side much at all. Spotify is all about discovery. And people can only be fans and therefor financially invested in music they listen to. If getting them to listen is free, the world is a much better place than it was when advertising dollars ruled the discovery game.
  • Warner are talking about Warner, not as Carl Morris pointed out on Twitter, what is best for artists, genres or regions. If streaming services could be proved to be having a detrimental effect on a particular artist’s career, then pulling their music from the service would perhaps be a decision worth discussing. Blanket judgements for an entire media empire – without considering how many artists are themselves active supporters of streaming as a concept, and who are able to directly attribute an increase in new listeners to the ability of their fans to share links to free streams with their friends – are worse than useless. They’re reckless.
  • There’s no mention here of whether or not sales have dropped across the board out of line with any projections of how the curve would be without streaming services. If streaming is a discovery mechanism, then the revenue would naturally be found elsewhere, as we saw with the Lady GaGa story of small payouts from Spotify, but still being able to sell 20 MILLION paid downloads in the same time-period.

People paying a tenner for Spotify is no better or worse for the industry than them paying a tenner to eMusic to buy the things they’ve found using Spotify, or spending ten quid a month on CDs or other downloads. And lets not forget that statistically, those who spend £120 a year on music are a pretty small minority of music consumers. They always have been. A tenner a month is a lot for yer average listener to fork out to rent some streams (if you stop paying, all the content and stored playlists you’ve created on your mobile device is lost. Any downloads happening via the Spotify interface are happening at 79p a track, via 7digital (more big industry stupidity – make them cheaper, you eejits!)

When I listen to music, whether free or paid, I’m not thinking about ‘the industry’. I’m not supporting ‘the industry’ when I buy music, I’m giving it to artists in exchange for them being awesome. Awesomeness is something I’m willing to put a cash value on. As are lots of people.

Discovery is something that benefits the person being discovered at least as much as the one doing the discovery – that’s the foundational principle of advertising, and is why record labels pay for adverts. They’re even willing to illegally pay for airtime.

Here, Warner are being retrogressive, making blanket decisions based on ‘the industry’ not artists, have no idea what streaming services actually provide to their users, and don’t appear considered how awesome free discovery mechanisms are for everyone along the chain outside of their old industry metrics that placed cash (from both sides) in front of the discovery process.

Another Major Label FAIL.

Meanwhile, here’s some awesome music you can have for free, or pay for if you want to thank Ben Walker for his awesomeness:

10 Replies to “Warner’s Mistakes”

  1. I don’t think Warner Bros are being as much stupid as cynical and evil.

    I believe they *do* understand the benefits of discovery, and are against it, because under a free discovery model they will lose business to competitors. Ultimately the consumer has a finite amount of money to spend on music, and money spent on independent artists is money not spent on Warner Bros artists.

    They’ve bet their business on a model that revolves around maximising sales of the smallest possible roster of artists. Free discovery undermines that model.

    Not that they’ll win. They majors have already lost the war, they just don’t know it yet.

  2. It really is like watching ol’ Stegosaurus blundering about in the undergrowth isn’t it. But at least people might be waking up to the idea that major labels haven’t been interested in the needs/hopes/dreams of the artist for many years, only their potential to make money for the evil empire.

  3. I dunno about this.

    I was initially very excited about services like Spotify and it’s currently my main source of discovery and general listening. But what if all the majors pull out of all of these kind of services?

    I will have to aquire my music from somewhere and I don’t really want to have to go back to torrents and all that hassle.

    1. I can personally attest to the fact that you don’t need major labels. Independent artists have been producing brilliant music for years and all you need to do to discover them is check out some music podcasts.

  4. Well there are more artists i want to check out on spotify than i’ll ever have time for and still will be if warner with draw all their acts. And if thats what they do good luck to their acts if they want my attention. Radio? Think i’ve only in the last year deliberatly listened to shows when mates bands were on live. Otherwised its something in background at work – not overly likely to sell me an album. Maybe warner only want to sell established acts, and maybe they fear half of them have albums so piss poor no one will buy if they hear them first. Sounds like smaller acts would be advised to work out how to force warner to drop them.

Comments are closed.

© 2008 Steve Lawson and developed by Pretentia. | login

Top