Radiohead / Spotify must break its "everything free" rule - for better or worse

Each week, The MBW Review gives our take on some of the biggest news stories of the previous seven days. This week, we discuss reaction to Radiohead’s decision to place their album on Apple Music and TIDAL – but blackball Spotify. The MBW Review issupported by FUGA. (The views in these articles are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by our supporter.)

“As musicians we need to fight the Spotify thing… all these f*ckers get in the way… We don’t need you… so f*ck off.”

Thom Yorke there, being typically timid and retiring about the virtues of Daniel Ek’s service back in 2013.

...

If you don’t believe this is an increasingly serious shortcoming for the Swedish service, consider the fact that four out of the Top 5 albums in the UK right now aren’t on its platform.

...

One label boss told me last week that there is a now groundswell of industry support for Spotify to announce a simple change: all new albums windowed for two weeks on premium.

It’s a blunt solution to the problem, but as they put it: “It would make most of this headache just… go away.”

Bear in mind that Spotify is currently in licensing re-negotiations with the world’s biggest music rights-holders – itself an ever-moving, nuanced debate about paid vs. free.

...

Think back to the number of people currently connected to the internet not paying for streaming music services: 3.3bn.

To put it another way, of all the internet users in the world, 98% are not currently streaming music subscribers.

If it wants to reach a decent chunk of the 98% in a unified and compelling manner, the music business needs to get its house in order.

...

But when Thom Yorke summed up his feelings about streaming in general during the same interview, he said:

“It’s all about how we change the way we listen to music… and a lot of it could be really fucking bad.”

Sorry to say, he got that last bit spot on.

full post on Musicbusinessworldwide

>> Related Article >>

Radiohead Offers Spotify a Suggestion on Where to Stuff Something

Just when we thought Radiohead had reconciled with Spotify by releasing their new single, ‘Burn The Witch,’ on the streaming platform…

full post on Digitalmusicnews

#Spotify #Streaming #Windowing #Sales #Market #Artist