The Record Industry Gave Everything Away to Spotify. Could It Change Its Mind?

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What would happen if music services operated like Netflix – offering not every artist you can think of, but bidding among themselves for the biggest ones? The latest from columnist Tim Ingham

to whom I’ve posited this idea in the past few years dismiss it readily. Their argument: By giving everything away to Spotify et al., the record industry finally delivered consumers an experience that was better than piracy. And it’s certainly true that, since Spotify arrived in the U.S., in 2011, annual global recorded-music revenues have grown 22 percent — from $15.7 billion at the time to $19.1 billion last year.

Yet the idea that making all artist catalogs available on streaming has killed piracy is flawed. Witness last year’sreport by global recorded music trade body IFPI, which found, via an extensive survey, that more than a third of music consumers, worldwide, were still accessing tracks via copyright-infringing platforms — 10 years after Spotify first launched in Europe.

And yet the new IFPI report shines an important light on the potential that lies ahead among an older demographic for the likes of Spotify . Thenotes that “the highest rate of growth for use of streaming services [globally] is in the 35-64 age group,” with 54 percent of this societal segment having used a music streaming service in the prior month, up eight percent versus 2018.

The major record companies will be watching the current TV “streaming wars” closely. Their conclusion will show whether a catalog-exclusives strategy frustrates consumers to the point that they stop spending — or, in fact, succeeds in delivering even sweeter paydays to the biggest rights-holders of the streaming age.

 

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So rent music? Lol no, whats next rent clothes?

then I would just listen to and watch concert footage for free on YouTube like I do now.

Bad

So, they'd effectively be the new record labels, operating on the premise of scarcity, the way the labels have for a century. Innovative.

Eeerrrgghhhh 🤮

I’d still buy cds and vinyl because I’m old.

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