Why does the Music Industry allow Spotify/Apple to profit off of them?
Why does the Music Industry allow Spotify/Apple to profit off of them?
We all know the music industry isn’t in a good place right now. Sales are down and artist are not happy. So it made me think? Why don’t the Big 3 (Universal, Warner & Sony) just come together and make their own streaming service with all their music, instead of sharing profits with Spotify and Apple Music? I don’t get it.
Film/TV industries have their own dedicated services like Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+, etc. They don’t have a middle man taking a cut like Cable. Obviously, the Big 3 would need to come together to make this happen. Having 1 music service strictly for just 1 of them is a bad idea.
I just think Spotify & Apple are benefitting from this way more than the labels. And with Spotify paying HUGE amounts to the likes of Joe Rogan 😒. It’s kind of a slap in the face of the industry that MADE them this big. Like why is the Talk Tuah podcast getting just as big of bags as the labels & Artist? I know Jay Z tried his own service ran strictly by the artist called Tidal like 10 years ago, but he couldn’t get enough big artist to invest into it long term.
Can someone PLEASE explain to me why the Music Industry allows this?
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Why don’t the Big 3 (Universal, Warner & Sony) just come together and make their own streaming service with all their music,
Careful what you wish for. It's long been a concern of mine that we'll see a fragmentation of the music streaming market, with the same results as in TV.
You know how one show you like is on Disney+ and one is on Netflix and two are on Amazon, and one is on Paramount and so on...? Result is you either miss shows or pay a fortune.
Imagine that with your favourite bands, except you need a Warner subscription to listen to one band, a Sony one to listen to another, etc.
It's bad enough with some things not being on one music service while they are on another one, or with songs being there and then gone and then back again for utterly opaque reasons. If the labels get the idea that they can cut out the middle man and gate off their artists from any service but their own, it'll be awful.
There were attempts at trying to create a label specific streaming site that failed miserably. If no one was going to sign up for Tidal, they weren't going to sign up for a Sony site.
Well hopefully not. I didn't know it had been tried before, that's interesting.
there's a solution to the streaming fragmentation problem: piracy. i don't watch diz+ and para+ and netflix; i just go to Plex or jellyfin
I guess, but for your average consumer that's not going to be an attractive option.
Result is you either miss shows or pay a fortune.
Or you go back to sailing the high seas.
I noted that in the post. It’s even in the quote. “Come together”. Nobody wants multiple subscriptions lol.
Yeah, I know, but I feel like execs are more likely to want to go it alone and have exclusive artists than have to work out a way to share with each other.
We’ve seen it in movies; we’ve seen it in gaming; we saw it starting in music right around when Apple stepped in with the iTunes music store, and then the music execs saw an uptick they didn’t want to lose. When Apple pivoted to streaming, they no longer had much of a say; ClearChannel/iHeartRadio had already consolidated OTA streaming and they had nowhere left to go.
It’s much easier to prevent the likes of Netflix than to stand up a united opposition to it and succeed — especially with the spectre of monopoly regulation sitting back stage.