too expensive to buy every CD, album or song i would want to listen to
You are most certainly wrong. Apple is not the greedy one. The only thing on this planet that is greedier than a movie exec is a music exec.
Apple saved them. And they already forgot about it. It's why Steve won a Grammy. Thanks for keeping our business alive with iTunes, here's a ****ing metal. And to think that they want Apple to pay even more now than before for music infuriates me.
Dear god people, do you even understand how horrifically BAD streaming services are for everyone involved in music creation? Seriously, if you look at the "performance" rates - which ARE NOT what the label gets, but are instead distributed amongst
all the rights holders - they are making no money on these models. The
labels are not getting greedy - they are trying to stay above the water!
I'm not saying that they are well-run businesses - they are certainly not - but there is no way, under the current streaming model(s), for them to maintain themselves, much less make a profit, even if they were to clean up their collective financial acts.
To give you an idea of how stupidly unfair to the rights holders these performance rates are, I've got a friend (who shall remain anonymous) who was the songwriter - 25% of the gross - on a song with around 1,000,000 plays on Spotify. Do you know what his BMI check was, for that nominally great achievement? $111. So Spotify paid out a grand total of ~$400 for that million plays. Real numbers.
The truth is that the music "industry" (far too polite a term) is a total mess, stuck in between a number of old models and copyright legislation that has not kept up with either technology or social or business trends. The revenue just isn't there any more, and people are feeling more and more entitled because of the actions of these loss-leader companies (Spotify and Pandora are both losing money)...
To all those who want the service to be free:
How would you like to work for free?
That is what you're asking us, the content producers, to do.
To all those who think the "music industry" is a bunch of greedy executives:
Think about all the other people, other than execs (who are often greedy, no further comment), who work on music. Ask how they are going to get paid.
To all those who are complaining about these services:
C'mon - for $10 a month (Spotify/GMAA) you can get pretty much all the music released on major labels over the last 60 years, and most of the independent music that has survived into the digital age. Stop complaining about the quality of your golden toilets, people.
To all those who think music should be free, full stop:
[Facepalm]
Seriously, are we in a time where people are
expected to do labor for no compensation? Because that is what you are advocating. It's not always about greed...