How much would you pay for all the world’s music?
A Spotify premium subscription is perhaps the biggest bargain available in the western world.
For $12.99 each month, you are given access to the largest archive of recorded audio ever assembled, a library containing the vast majority of music that has ever been commercially released — over a century’s worth of human endeavour – plus 4.7 million different podcasts to boot.
During the week, Spotify announced its Premium Family subscription will soon increase from $20.99 a month to $23.99.
So Spotify is bad and Napster is bad, but more streaming services will mean more money because we want more ads?
Having a bit of a broader read there are some interesting trends you can see when reading the Q4 earnings calls from the major labels.
– UMG €3.2 billion Euro in revenue
– Sony $1.93 billion USD in revenue
– Warner $1.56 billion USD in revenue
It sounds like there is money to go around it’s just being held at the label level and not going to the artists.
That was really well parsed Nathan. Another price hike in the next 18 mths would go a long way to confirming your theory.
Would really appreciate your take on the entities buying out artists rights, and how that fits in here. I read an interview with Hipgnosis’ founder where he said he was trying to build enough critical mass to negotiate better rates with the streamers. Lately they too have experienced a cash crunch and had to divest themselves of some of their rights to service their financial position.
That <1000 streams factoid is disgusting.
Thanks for considering/honouring the source of it all – the musicians and writers, not many industry articles even get that far! Pity musicians are driven by a passion to create what everyone wants but is so easy to steal, musicians wont go on strike because …. they can’t…