Fool Me Twice: How Spotify Could Become the New iTunes Store

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Back in 2003, as the music industry was reeling from widespread, Napster-fueled piracy, Apple CEO Steve Jobs made the record labels an offer they couldn’t resist: Give me a license to sell individual tracks but let me sell them cheap enough to be a viable alternative to free, and I’ll wrap them in DRM for you in a way that consumers will accept, so they can’t be copied.

The labels leapt at the deal and the $1.00 download became the new atomic unit of the business.

Though thrilled at first to have an answer to piracy the record companies eventually came to rue the arrangement once they figured out that Apple was using those inexpensive downloads to supercharge the market for its high-margin iPods and later iPhone hardware, and was reaping far more of the value being created by their music than they were. By then, however, they had become captive to Apple’s ecosystem: Thanks to Apple’s proprietary DRM, the only way to sell music to iPod users — at the time the largest segment of the portable music-player install base — was through iTunes, under terms effectively dictated by Apple. Read More »

Competing With Paid

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The rise of subscription streaming services, in both the music and video industries, has given the lie to the old complaint that consumers won’t pay for content online. But to many in the music industry, to say nothing of streaming investors, too many of them still don’t.

Ad-supported free streaming services remain the bête noire of the record labels and music publishers. They rail against YouTube, even as they’re making deals with it, and have fought to restrict the copyright safe harbors that allow YouTube to profit from music posted without license by users. They’ve maintained pressure on Spotify to shift more of its free users to its paid subscription tier, a tune now echoed by potential investors as Spotify eyes an IPO or public listing of its shares, and have begun to restrict when new releases are made available on the service’s free tier. Read More »

Have Netflix, Will Travel: EU Digital Single Market Inches Closer

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Negotiators for the European Commission, the European Parliament, and European Union member countries this week reached agreement on new rules that will allow citizens from one EU country to access digital services they subscribe to, such as Netflix, Spotify, and sports live streams, when traveling in another EU country starting in 2018.

Up to now, exclusive territorial licenses between rights owners and online services, as well as other rules, have generally prevented services from granting access to subscribers from outside their home country.

“Today’s agreement will bring concrete benefits to Europeans. People who have subscribed to their favourite series, music and sports events at home will be able to enjoy them when they travel in Europe,” EU vice-president in charge of the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip said in a statement. Read More »

Apple Tip-Toes Into Original Video

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The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Apple has begun talks with producers in Hollywood about buy rights to original TV series and movies. If true it would represent at least the third attempt by the iPhone maker to crack the TV code, so far without notable success, although its strategy this time appears to be different from its previous efforts.

I say “appears” because, according to the Journal, Apple itself  “is still working out details of its business strategy built around original content.”

The new shows, which could begin appearing by the end of this year, will reportedly be made available to subscribers of Apple Music, suggesting this isn’t an attempt (yet) to build a direct competitor to Netflix and Amazon Prime. The fact that Apple is targeting individual movies and TV series rather than networks suggests this is also not some sort of skinny bundle play to compete with Sling TV and the new Hulu service. Read More »

Autumn Of The A&R Man

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The International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI) this week released its biannual Investing in Music report and the numbers raised quite a few eyebrows. According to the report, record labels worldwide invested U.S. $4.5 billion last year in A&R ($2.8 billion) and marketing, ($1.7 billion), representing 27 percent of their total revenue, more than the pharmaceutical, aerospace, or technology industry spends on R&D in percentage terms.

His_Master's_VoiceThat represents an increase of 12 percent and 6 percent, respectively, over 2013.

Particularly eye-opening was the report’s claim that it costs a label anywhere from $500,00 to $2 million to “break” a new artist in a major market like the U.S. or U.K., factoring in the “upfront” costs of artist advances, recording, music video production, tour support, and marketing and promotion.

The report is clearly meant to bolster the case for the continued relevance of traditional record companies amid the simmering industry debate over whether artists still need a label deal, given the availability of cheap, DIY recording technology and the myriad independent distributors, aggregators, marketers and other service providers offering to help artists bring their music to market. Read More »