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Apple Trying to Torpedo Spotify's U.S. Launch?

Killyp said:
Spotify is 'part of the problem' of people not paying for music. It's a problem because it involves time/money and huge amounts of effort to put music together, and Spotify is essentially saying to people they don't have to pay for their recorded music, which they unfortunately do if they want it to keep going. If Spotify continues the way it does, there will be much less new music appearing on it's catalogue as musicians simply cannot afford the recording sessions, hence studios go out of business.

I partly blame the record labels though - I'd be all for Spotify if the labels had struck 'limited-availability' deals on the service. 'Album X' is released, it's available on Spotify for a month, two months or however long, and after that, if you want to listen to it, you have to buy it.
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I respectfully disagree. File-sharing was prevalent long before Spotify came on the scene. Spotify convinced some downloaders (e.g. Limewire users and casual torrenters) to stop in favour of a simpler service... and although a commenter earlier in the thread called it BS, the anecdotal evidence over a large student body is really quite telling. People may use a legal service to listen to music for free. It's not the user's concern how much artists are getting paid, but rather the deal between label and Spotify.

As for the limited availability deals, they do exist but in the opposite fashion. Some of the newer, more popular albums are unavailable to Spotify Open or Free users, requiring a Premium subscription to listen to them. People are more likely to foot up money for a new album they want to listen to, rather than old albums they can buy elsewhere on the cheap.
 
I totally agree Callb and all my student mates at my uni (Bath) seem to follow the pattern.

Least we have the service in the UK :)
 
This website is hilarious, and I thank each and every one of you.

News item: "Apple trying to stifle online music service"

"I hate you Apple. You suck! voting negative! negative! negative!"


News item: "New iPhone 5 coming"

"I love you, Apple!!!! Apple rocks! positive, positive, positive! iPhone rocks!!"


News item: "iPhone 4 antennae has problems"

"I hate you, Apple! Steve Jobs, fail. I hate the iPhone. voted negative."


News item: "Civilization 5 coming to Mac"

"I love you, Apple!! Mac 4ever!! voted positive! Macs are awesome! I wanna have Steve Jobs babies!!!!!!"


Also, thumbs up for new music services and increased competition and choice. Thumbs down for draconian companies who try to stifle competition to keep their wallets fat. Apple's "Big brother" Mac commercial is becoming more and more ironic. Big brother, indeed.
 
Silverman said:
"Big brain" statements like this need to be addressed.
PERFORMING artists tour, session musicians, studio engineers, songwriters (with few exceptions) do not. They still work on producing the records, and need to be rewarded for their work. Please try to have a better understanding of the music industry, it might help your judgements.
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So you should get paid for the hours that you put in. No more No less.

If my understanding of the "industry" is wrong, I really couldn't care, perhaps how the "industry" sees itself and expects revenues is WRONG.
 
Killyp said:
That was a genuine mistake which I'm very sorry you're offended about. Nonetheless, in the politest way possible, I think you're being a little on the rude side, which is never helpful. We should keep this conversation as mature and sensible as possible.




I agree with you RE the discovery of new music, but the fact is that nobody pays for it when they listen to it.

We could get into a whole debate about live touring etc... but unfortunately it's a VERY different world to the recorded music world, and there are many, many pitfalls of touring, such as actually being able to perform your material live, which isn't always possible with many genres of music.

If I can't really make much money from recorded music, then where should I get the cash from which is needed to hit a decent studio, record musicians A, B and C who I want on my tune? Please don't tell me I shouldn't have a violin on my song because I can't afford it, that is a whole different conversation. A day's rate at a good tracking studio is around £300-400, a good session musician can be £200 upwards, a mixing engineer will cost you approx. £300 a day, then the same with the mastering. Then you've got the legal side of looking after your music which is a totally hidden cost...

Take all these factors out of the recording chain, and you're going to directly impact the end-result. Do you not agree that musicians should be given the creative freedom they need to make the music they envisage, or would you like the music you listen to to be affected by financial constraints?



Maybe for rock and roll, but not true with all kinds of music...Then get paid by the hour



That really is an incredible over-simplification...In your view



Are you saying you don't want to listen to recorded music? Your misguided assessment, one does not lead to the other




Well if I knew the answer to that, then I'd be making a crust being a performing and recording musician. As it happens, I'm not, I'm a student in full time Music higher-education, who also records and performs. And? so you want to be paid for ...what?



Exactly, they have day jobs - their 'career' as a musician isn't enough for them to live from, as a result, it's a hobby, a past-time.
Are you saying that we should subsidise people in an industry that can't make it by being paid a set fee for a set piece of work?

Before anybody comes back at this with some logical, but not necessarily practical theory about things a musician should do to try and have a successful career - I suggest you try it yourself and see the real damage and impact which has been done to the music industry as a result of the way people's listening habits and values towards recorded music have changed...
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A far as I'm concerned Artists should get paid when they work, and only when they work. Do a gig, get cash. Do some session work, get paid for the session. Compose music for a TV program or a play. Get paid for it. This will sort the want to be's from the real artists. So if you don't like your song or music being played on a free service, then be careful of the contract you sign.
 
Bernard SG said:
in the "recent years"? It's been going on for nearly two decades now.
I would say 90% of the music we hear nowadays doesn't have a human drummer.
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Pulled that number right out of your rear did you?
90% of hip hop or rap perhaps, but not Rock. Metal, Country, Jazz, R&B, etc.
 
A lot of producers and engineers are not the hollywood moguls you are thinking of, but average income, hard working people.

Your position as a champion of the people is further weakened by the use of a childish slur.

The Music industry is toast and nothing is going to save it. If artists want to make money then they're going to have to go on the road and earn it. Why should I buy music from a store or from itunes when I can download it for free in 5 minutes? They should be looking for new job. Those crooks in the movie industry are next.
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You pirate their music and they are the crooks? Of course. I forgot you are entitled to everything. You couldn't just get a job and buy the music?


Akula971 said:
So you should get paid for the hours that you put in. No more No less.
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How about this. I pay you $50 for the two minutes it takes to get a good photo of you. And then I use your likeness everywhere, on anything I want: porn ads, erectile disfunction ads, ads promoting women's safety that just happen to show you as a criminal rapist.

And you shouldn't get any more than that initial $50, nor have a say in how I use it, because you only worked 2 minutes got paid your $50.
 
Akula971 said:
So you should get paid for the hours that you put in. No more No less.

If my understanding of the "industry" is wrong, I really couldn't care, perhaps how the "industry" sees itself and expects revenues is WRONG.
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Your understanding is extremely wrong.

Many songs you listen too were written by someone other than the person performing it.
They get paid based on publishing and sales where as the performer gets a performance credit and of course, proceeds from live show.

Those studio musicians get paid a base fee for the session, but most of their money typically comes from a percentage of sales.

People who complain about the cost of music fail to realize just how much time, effort and money that goes into producing a single 3 minute song.
Then there's all the promotion and distribution that has to occur.

The band is only one part of it... and in most cases not a very big one.

Recording equipment ain't cheap.
Instruments aren't cheap.
Studios aren't cheap to build or maintain. (Sorry, but there ain't one single garage studio that can duplicate the sound quality that comes out of a high end studio). Passable at best.

Advertising costs major $$$ .
All the effort is for not if nobody knows who you are.
 
I adore Spotify, brilliant service.

Started off on the free 20 hours per month service, and quickly upgraded to the £9.99 per month service which gives higher quality audio, streaming to your iPhone, offline playlists, no ads, etc.

Apple are being complete arses over this move, it reeks of nothing but greed and fear for their own business model, hiding behind some pish that they are "worried for the industry" and that it might not make studios enough money.

The only pockets Jobs is interested in are Apples, and to an extent rightly so.

However, do not deprive people of a perfectly good service just because you fear it.
 
caddisfly said:
it is a peer-to-peer structure which btw uses *your* bandwidth, your network connection, your machine and your spotify cache as a distribution node to stream music to other spotify customers in the near network space.....so keep an eye on your data plan ceilings ;-)
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The mobile app doesn't use peer to peer, so you shouldn't need to worry about any data limits from that.

It will also cache as much music as it can (up to a limit set by you), so that it doesn't keep downloading the same songs over and over again.

You can also choose a lower audio quality when streaming over a cellular network (it works over EDGE or 3G).

Using the offline mode, you can sync over a Wi-Fi connection too.

The Desktop app really doesn't use that much data despite the P2P nature.
 
Bernard SG said:
in the "recent years"? It's been going on for nearly two decades now.
I would say 90% of the music we hear nowadays doesn't have a human drummer.
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I think you should start listening to different kinds of music. The problem might not be with the music industry but with whatever you listen that made you come up with the percentage.
 
Spotify's integration with Facebook and the manner in which it does it also pisses on Ping from a very great height.

Forgot to add that in my previous post.
 
Killyp said:
There is no money coming in from recorded music! Half the major studios across the world have gone bust - many which used to be operating with very comfortable profits are now operating in the red constantly! Many VERY famous records got 'their sound' from studios.

Abbey Road studios for example, is operating just in the red (I believe), yet they're constantly booked out, the studio is in use full time - there's just far less money available to do recording sessions with.
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Piracy...

graph reported music piracy against digital downloads.

correlate much?
 
Killyp said:
Spotify is 'part of the problem' of people not paying for music. It's a problem because it involves time/money and huge amounts of effort to put music together, and Spotify is essentially saying to people they don't have to pay for their recorded music, which they unfortunately do if they want it to keep going. If Spotify continues the way it does, there will be much less new music appearing on it's catalogue as musicians simply cannot afford the recording sessions, hence studios go out of business.
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Again, you do not understand the business model behind spotify.

Killyp said:
At least before Spotify if somebody wanted to listen to music 'legally' they had to cough up for it.
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Or you know, turn on the radio and listen to music for free. How did the artists get payed back then ? :rolleyes:

Hint : Spotify's free music service and the radio airwaves of the last 75 years have the same business model. You are not a customer of either, you are their product. They are selling you to someone and that someone is paying for the music you listen to.

Think about it.
 
LOLaMac said:
This website is hilarious, and I thank each and every one of you.

News item: "Apple trying to stifle online music service"

"I hate you Apple. You suck! voting negative! negative! negative!"


News item: "New iPhone 5 coming"

"I love you, Apple!!!! Apple rocks! positive, positive, positive! iPhone rocks!!"


News item: "iPhone 4 antennae has problems"

"I hate you, Apple! Steve Jobs, fail. I hate the iPhone. voted negative."


News item: "Civilization 5 coming to Mac"

"I love you, Apple!! Mac 4ever!! voted positive! Macs are awesome! I wanna have Steve Jobs babies!!!!!!"


Also, thumbs up for new music services and increased competition and choice. Thumbs down for draconian companies who try to stifle competition to keep their wallets fat. Apple's "Big brother" Mac commercial is becoming more and more ironic. Big brother, indeed.
Click to expand...

I find this rather dualistic. isn't it possible that a company such as Apple does some things right, some things wrong, and some things in between?

Having said that. Not many artist gets money from Spotify simply because such services are not in their contracts. But times will change. Artists will negociate different deals. And services like Spotify are the future. CD's are so 80's and sorry Apple: iTunes is so 00's!
 
Apple is moving perilously close (for them) to a content/entertainment stranglehold. They control the availability and distribution of content while using a closed hardware/software package.....I wonder how long it will be until the small guys (or NY, EU, etc.) being eaten up by this mammoth snowball rolling down hill think about a 'restraint of trade' filing? (spelled monopoly).

I own a MacPro, three minis, IPAD and IPhone, but really don't like the direction in which they're moving. Proprietary formats and connectors.......etc.
 
I use the paid subscription of Spotify and can safely say that I will never use iTunes... not because it's a bad service but because I know Apple could have done a Spotify style service long ago but didn't because they are too greedy. Apple has scared me away from using iTunes permanently. Hope it launches states side soon! Spotify is the best!
 
j-traxx said:
i cant with this anymore. everyone screaming "go free" and not realizing that the producers and the engineers in the background of the music industry stand to be destroyed by this business model. its a sad sad day. its not just tunes to listen to. its someone's livelyhood being destroyed.
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Hey ... I'm one of those producers you're talking about.. and I can safely say you are full of BS! Adapt or die... it's the way of the world. If you can't hack it you don't deserve it... and by the way I have more money than I need.
 
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