It’s revolution after revolution for the music industry right now, and we’re not talking vinyl rotations. Music’s digital explosion has prompted a whole heap of benefits, challenges and changes, many of which are still being negotiated on several different levels.
Spotify, an online music-streaming service allowing instant listening to millions of songs, is providing the latest industry twist. The Swedish company launched in the UK earlier this year and followed that up last month with the launch of a mobile service allowing people to plunder a portable and fully comprehensive jukebox anytime, anywhere. Commentators re-iterated their previous suggestions that Joe Public might never need to ‘own’ another track again; but this time more forcefully.
Spotify is different to some of the online music subscription set-ups that have controversially gone before. It’s legal, for starters, and aims to strike that tricky industry balance between giving consumers free music and record labels revenue. Free Spotify subscriptions come with adverts every 15 minutes or so, but pay £9.99 for a monthly pass and the ads disappear. Either way, the service supposedly generates revenue for itself and the record industry.
But is it really that simple? “We’ve been agonizing over some of these new media models for a long, long time, and the jury is still out” exclaims Lee Bright, one of the main driving forces behind cult club imprint Barely Breaking Even (BBE.) “We feel damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”
For BBE, a label which has operated since the early 1990s on a highly reputable mixture of eclectic, soulful music including everything from techno to funk, there are major concerns about earning potential from sites like Spotify. “There a sense of encouraging the ‘music for free’ mindset – you’re getting hundreds of pages of accounting and, at the very bottom, a tiny figure for total income. Then again, if you ignore the current trend then you’re in major denial. At the end of the day, our aim is to get the music out to as many places as is possible in the hope third party licensing will increase.”
Whilst BBE waits patiently, Spotify is evolving again. The site has been in the news this week having agreed its first mobile operator partnership with 3. In the weeks ahead a range of 3 phones will be bundled with Spotify, bringing it in to direct competition with Nokia’s unlimited music download service Comes With Music. Elsewhere, Napster, the original file-sharing revolution, has started undercutting Spotify’s monthly rates, and Sky has unveiled Sky Songs, yet another streaming service promising competitive fees and varied content.
The subscription-service market appears to be bustling like never before. But industry experts urge caution. In the case of Spotify, some think it might not even last another year. The problem, they say, is that nearly 90% of UK Spotify users have free subscriptions and advertising revenue just isn’t enough to operate on. Those free registrations were restricted last month after the service struggled to cope with demand following the unveiling of its mobile service. Meanwhile, criticism has intensified around the fact that Spotify is allegedly failing to fairly compensate independent artists.
“Token payments – my ass! As creative as new digital platforms like Spotify are, they still undervalue our music and kick our beloved musicians to the curb” argues Sarah Foote, owner of the Favouritizm house label and PR agency. “Even with high charting records sales barely pay for the cost of releases; and if artists and labels are barely making profit how can they afford to publicise their fantastic material?”
Quick access music for the masses is, without doubt, a good thing; especially considering the hectic, time-poor 21st century lives many of us now lead. But, clearly, challenges remain in terms of how to properly and fairly implement these necessary changes. The answer, one feels, is still countless clicks away...
