Netflix has this problem too but they “solved” it by making their own content. Amazon are Google are doing the same thing. That’s the direction I see Spotify going, though I wonder why Apple hasn’t done this yet.
Making their own content for video has the advantage that most people are OK with opening a new browser tab or an app to watch a specific movie or show.
With music, however, you don't want to run multiple conflicting music players, especially when they don't sync up playlists and seamlessly work together.
I wonder how that will pan out. It's a significant difference.
From my perspective, all the streaming services should be working together to create a healthy marketplace for independent music, and providing every opportunity they can for musicians to avoid signing a big-four contract. If Warner and Sony, and UMG get their act together and create a joint venture streaming service that's the exclusive host of the content they own, Spotify, Google Music, and Apple Music are screwed.
Unfortunately for music, the exclusivity has started to show up in some cases. Artists that own the Tidal service don't allow any of their music on competing services, and Apple has been signing contracts with musicians to have new content show up on their service several months in advance before it does on other services (like Jay Z and Kanye).
From Netflix subscriber numbers, it's also not clear that the lost content has dented their subscriber retention at all. The talk among my friends centers much more around new Netflix originals (or even Amazon/Hulu originals) than around back catalog stuff on Amazon or Hulu. I don't understand why -- I'm utterly uncompelled by 95%+ of what they're putting out, since I don't have the motivation to deeply investigate new Netflix shows/movies every week, and however they're advertising, it doesn't really reach me -- but it's what I see happening, much to my annoyance.
If they sign on 100 top artistes, it will devalue the portfolio of music held by the top 3 - for reasons you explained. Thus, the top 3 are incentivized to collaborate with Spotify.
I can't speak for grooveshark or rdio, but as far as I know soundcloud still exists. I just added a song there and listened to some other stuff a week ago. Did I miss something?
IME, lots of people find new music by genre/mood/etc. curated or “like this song/artist” algorithmic stations in streaming services, not terrestrial radio.
https://musicbiz.org/news/music-bizloop-study-millennials-tu...
But it looks like the data from other recent sources are mixed, with different surveys posting widely varying data, consistent in the direction of change from radio to streaming) but not what the current leading discovery sources are or even the relative placement of streaming vs. radio.
It's a more limited piece that only talks about 15-19 year olds, which is a far smaller audience than kingraoul3's link. kingraoul3's link has data on ages 12 and older.
and personally, unless spotify continues to have the vast majority of the music i want to listen to, i won't continue being a subscriber.
Netflicks is creating there own content which would mean spotify would need to create new bands instead of sign existing ones which most likely would fail because they are all under contract.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps#Apple_Corps_v._App...