A big thumbs up
that is all.
Hey, Spotify! Why do you internet companies hate competition?
Last year Spotify hired a former political strategist in the Obama administration and some of Pandora’s lobbyists to protect its untenable and money-losing business model. I predict that the end goal of these efforts will leave artists and songwriters worse off. The ex-Obama hand is called Jonathan Prince. Spotify’s lobbying …
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Wednesday 15th July 2015 21:20 GMT Pascal Monett
"it is the multibillion-dollar streaming services asking for the handout"
The problem is not that they ask. Anyone is entitled to ask.
The problem is that the government just might give them the money, instead of fostering a proper copyright environment and cleaning out the patent issues.
But nobody likes cleaning the toilets when having a barbecue is so much more fun.
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Thursday 16th July 2015 07:59 GMT Roq D. Kasba
Photo choice
OK, seeing as your new format mandates huge images for each article, and that Spotify is somewhat aetheric in nature, you needed to find something. I just think someone was playing 'Daily Telegraph Sub-Ed' for a day, with this one.
Someone wearing headphones...OK, if somewhat lacking in imagination...
Girl wearing headphones...
Pretty, white girl wearing headphones...
Pretty, white girl in makeup wearing headphones taken from a superior angle to suggest cleavage for no good reason...
If you must have illustrations to every article, how about making an effort? Even putting headphones on a dalek would be less Daily Mail
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Thursday 16th July 2015 09:08 GMT Graham Triggs
Oh look...
an artist writes a thinly veiled Spotify hate piece full of half-truths and lies.
So, you like the idea of Apple Music because it pays a little bit more. For now. But that doesn't make it fair competition.
When a massive manufacturer of smartphones and portable media devices not only launches a streaming service, but pre-installs it by default on to all their devices (including all of the existing ones that can / care to upgrade their OS), AND charges less for subscriptions because it unnecessairly and unfairly takes 30% of external subscriptions sold through it's platform (meaning a competitor has to charge more, or swallow the cost and have less money to pay artists), then that is a blatantly anti-competitive practice.
To put it in context, Microsoft got rapped for shipping IE by default, and that's just free software competing with other free software, and you wouldn't be able to download an alternative browser if Microsoft hadn't provided one in the first instance.
Spotify encouraging people to unsubscribe *from in-appand re-subsribe via Spotify website* is not simply encouraging people to unsubscribe. It is being done now purely as a matter of survival, because if you don't tell people they can get the same subscription at lower personal cost (and making no difference to Spotify's revenue / artist pay out), then they are going to unsubscribe anyway - and switch to the "cheaper" service (which is only cheaper for in-app subscriptions because it isn't subject to the 30% Apple tax).
Whether you like Spotify or not, whether you like how much they give to artists or not, you aren't going to get higher artist payments by attacking their ability to generate/maintain revenue. It can only lead to lower streaming payments and/or the collapse of the service.
And an Apple Music monopoly on streaming services is not going to be any better for artists in the long run.
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Thursday 16th July 2015 11:18 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Oh look...
Apple won't have a monopoly. They don't have a monopoly of devices. I presume they won't be issuing an Android app for example. This is why they avoid government action on monopoly, even though they run a walled garden. At the time of their run-ins, Microsoft were on 95% of PCs. Apple have 20% of the global smartphone market (30%-odd in the US I think) - and less of the PC market.
The article also suggests there's a risk of collusion between Youtube and Spotifiy. Something I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on - and also the risk of Google buying Spotify.
Finally the whole industry do seem to have quite a distressing habit of offering stuff for free to grow their service or to get advertising reveunue. And of course, what they're giving away for free is the artists' work. So I've got quite a lot of sympathy with artists who mostly aren't rich, when the technology industry keeps trying to find ways to make money out of what they produce, and then gets all sniffy and whiny when they complain and try to get compensated for their creative efforts.
It's good that musicians can make money by playing live, and I like live music. But I also like recorded music, and I like to hear from new artists. And that means that whatever market we evntually come up with needs to be funnelling money to those artists, so they've got the time to actually write and play their songs.
We have the same problem with news content. There's an awful lot of people who want to get the advertising revenue from hosting it. There's an awful lot of people who want to read it for free. But if we can't find a way to funnel sufficient cash to the right people, then we won't have professionals going out and collecting, collating, editing, fact-checking and producing our news content. And society will be the poorer for it.
Money ain't everything for sure. But sometimes the only way to get good quality stuff is to pay people to do it properly. Copyright is a way that society chose to organise itself to try and achieve this. You've got to feed the goose in order for it to lay golden eggs.
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Saturday 18th July 2015 12:14 GMT Graham Triggs
Re: Oh look...
It's about time we stopped only considering whether somebody is a monopoly and actually have rules and practices that apply fairly to everybody - whether they are a minority player, or a monopoly.
Take the 30% Apple cut on App Store sales. OK, reasonable for one-off sales / in-app purchases, where Apple will (probably) host the content, review it, etc. - and it is broadly in line with what other retail outlets would retain for selling somebody else's product.
But subscriptions? Generally, Apple aren't hosting the content, or acting as anything more than a payment processor. So is it fair that they retain so much of the revenue? It should simply be legislation that if you are effectively only acting as a payment processor, then your retained revenue should be broadly similar to other payment processors - e.g. the 1% - 2% charge of cards. If you provide other services, charge them separately - even clearly, and transparently add a service charge fee to the consumer if need be (so, a subscriber would see £9.99 Spotfiy in-app subscription, and then a separate line item of Apple Service Fee £3). That is a ruling which is fair regardless of whether you are running a store that has 20% market share, or 95% share.
Same with preinstalling applications - the Apple Music streaming app should not be preinstalled. Ever. (Same goes for Google, etc. offering apps with streaming subscriotions). There is no justification for it, as if you can use a streaming app, you can go into the app store and download it. Pre-installing your own products whilst "burying" your competitors in anti-competitive. Doing so whilst also taking a 30% cut of your competitor's revenue should be taken very, very seriously, regardless of market share.
I also have sympathy with artists in all fields - I know a fairly significant number personally - and yes, creative people have to be fairly rewarded for their efforts. But the majority of complaints about the payments of streaming services miss out one very big factor - that there is usually a man in the middle of the service and the artist who is sucking up unfaiirly an awful lot of the otherwis fairly reasonable payments.
And I sympathise with your view on free content, but lets not forget that Spotify, etc. were always paying *something* for their free service provision. It was Apple that wanted to not pay anything for the three months of giving stuff away.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
