re: Spotify gets better and better

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How is something that is great for fans terrible for artists?

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For example, I am paid $0.00029 per stream of a song on Spotify, and even this amount depends on whether the song is being streamed by a paid user or someone using the service for free. This means it will take upwards of 3,500 streams of a single song on Spotify to earn $1.00 versus that same revenue for one iTunes song purchase (not to mention the fact that Spotify refuses to pay the same amount to independent artists as they pay major labels, unlike iTunes).

Most would argue that it’s apples and oranges (no pun intended): iTunes is a digital storefront for artists while services like Spotify are about discovery. People will argue that low-cost streaming is good for the market, that it’s good for the artists, and that it’s still better than people taking your music for free from BitTorrent. But I tend to disagree on almost every point, mainly because it’s just not that simple. It’s true that iTunes is a place for people to purchase music, but it offers all the same benefits of Spotify in terms of discovery. And while Spotify is claiming to occupy the discovery space, it’s clear that the service is operating functionally as a storefront, since people are streaming music as an alternative to purchasing that same music.

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