Tag Archives: Spotify

June 22

Just What Exactly is Apple Up To?

Published earlier today on Medium There are a lot of articles analysing Apple’s new music service. (James Cridland’s got a good list of them here.) The majority of them are coming from tech journalists, and unfortunately, they suffer from a major lack of knowledge of how the music business actually works. They are worth reading, but […]

August 21

Spotify and Pandora artist payments: Not as exploitative as they’re made out to be. – Slate Magazine

And yet another take on the Spotify/streaming payment story. Because of the complexities of musical ownership and royalties, as well as the myriad ways of listening to and buying music, this story will always be like the story of the blind men trying to describe an elephant through the sense of touch.  Except in this […]

August 19

Streaming Shakes Up Music Industry’s Model for Royalties – NYTimes.com

More musicians weigh in on the subject of the financial side of online streaming: Streaming Shakes Up Music Industry’s Model for Royalties – NYTimes.com.

July 29

What’s the new A&R?

In my previous post, I discussed the recent announcement by Thom Yorke of Radiohead that he was pulling his music from Spotify. This announcement has caused quite a stir, with lots of people taking pro and anti Spotify positions.  It’s important to have this sort of debate, but the focus on Spotify is causing people […]

July 24

Spotify is not a record store, it’s a radio station!

Reflecting on the link I posted about Thom Yorke quitting Spotify, I kept thinking about the statement in the article that, “The industry average offers slightly less than 0.4p a stream – meaning that 1m streams of a song would generate about £3,800. Most songs receive far fewer streams.” The problem with this statement is […]

July 22

Thom Yorke blasts Spotify on Twitter as he pulls his music | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Tom Yorke is right about the problem of funding new artists, but he’s got the wrong enemy in his sights.  Spotify is not a cheapskate record label, it’s a generous radio network. More on this in a bit. Thom Yorke blasts Spotify on Twitter as he pulls his music | Technology | guardian.co.uk.