August 2016: Spotify zählt 39 Millionen zahlende Abonnenten

Spotify so:

Since most users will never subscribe to more than one streaming service, he believes that limiting access to music only incentivizes fans to seek it out on pirate sites or YouTube, where it generates less revenue. „I was brought onboard to strengthen the bridge between Spotify and the music community,“ he says.

Bloomberg so:

Spotify has been retaliating against musicians who introduce new material exclusively on rival Apple Music by making their songs harder to find, according to people familiar with the strategy. Artists who have given Apple exclusive access to new music have been told they won’t be able to get their tracks on featured playlists once the songs become available on Spotify, said the people, who declined to be identified discussing the steps. Those artists have also found their songs buried in the search rankings of Spotify, the world’s largest music-streaming service, the people said.

Spotify has been using such practices for about a year, one of the people said, though others said the efforts have escalated over the past few months.

Spotifys Situation so:

As Spotify AB gears up for a potential initial public offering next year, the music-streaming service is missing one key component in its pitch to investors: rights to play the music in years to come, according to people familiar with the matter.

Spotify is now operating on short-term extensions of its old contracts with all three major record companies, having been on a month-to-month basis with at least one of the labels for nearly a year. It is negotiating new deals that would make its finances more attractive to investors.

Spotify, which saw its net loss increase to roughly $200 million last year even as revenue doubled to more than $2 billion, wants to pay a smaller share than the nearly 55% of its revenue that it currently pays to record labels and artists, according to people familiar with the matter.

Exklusive Alben, die es nur auf Spotify, nur bei Tidal oder nur für Apple-Music-Abonnenten gibt, sind keine Neuerung der Streamingdienste, sondern waren bereits bei CD-Veröffentlichungen üblich. Wer damals nicht für eine ‚Special Edition‘ mit Bonustrack gezahlt hat, schließt heute auch kein zweites Streaming-Abo ab. Das Raubkopie-Argument, so wie es Spotify einwirft, ist schwach.

Spotifys Problem: Die Konkurrenz aus dem Hause Amazon, Google und Apple verdient ihr Geld nicht mit Musikstreaming.

Obendrein stoßen sich Künstler, Studios und Verleger am Gratis-Tarif, der die Lizenzgebühren drückt und durch die Einschränkung alle Songs nur in zufälliger Reihenfolge abzuspielen (und dazu noch mit Werbung unterbricht), das Album als geschlossenes Werk komplett zerreißt.

August 2016: Spotify zählt 39 Millionen zahlende Abonnenten, mehr als alle anderen, hat es aber verdammt schwer.