Ask HN: How did early streaming services populate their music databases? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How did early streaming services populate their music databases?

2 pointsvonseel6 comments

Sorry if this isn’t the right place, but I figured someone here might be able to answer. I’ve been watching The Playlist about Spotify’s first few years, and this is a question that has bugged me in the past.

Even way back then, I remember using Spotify and finding pretty much whatever I wanted to hear.

Did the companies (Spotify, Rdio, or others) build the technology and then negotiate with every record company to get the data? Did they rip a bunch of CDs (seems impossible) and then work out the contracts afterwards? Was there already some sort of online distributor they could get the data from?

I guess even now I’m curious what the flow of data looks like. I’m aware of a few independent distributors like Tunecore, CD Baby. I imagine there’s some sort of online data pipelines set up for this now, but I doubt that was the case back in 2009.

Anyways, I’d love to read more about it if anyone has some links to share or comments to add here!

Thanks :)

Spotify used to have a version of a song that I had for years on MP3. It had an audio defect in it that wasn't part of the actual song.

I'm not saying they got it on Napster/Limewire, but uhh--that's where I got my identical copy many years before Spotify existed.

Unfortunately I have forgotten what song it was.

each music company supplies both data (track and product metadata, territorial rights, pricing, etc.) and media to the service provider (e.g. Spotify). The process is to sign the contract with the music company, then the company ships all of the data to the provider to ingest into their systems. In the beginning, each music company sent metadata in a different format.. before electronic distribution, they would send hard drives that contained the media and metadata. The distribution formats are now driven by a standards-body.. but iTunes still has its own format.

This! I have been watching the show too and had the same exact question. My conclusion is that, when they launched they had one deal, so technically they were streaming music legally and music to which they didn’t have rights was not being streamed(although who really knows about the last part being true)

However what I don’t fully follow is why Spotify,as portrayed in the show, have to pay 70% to the record labels?

Also why are the artists not making money? I think one scene in the last episode indicated that the artists had made shitty deals with the record industry and hence they payout to the artist was low. It’s like the artists don’t own the music but instead they sign the rights away when they sign a deal with the record labels. I understand thst that’s how the music industry worked and record labels are the middlemen and collect the “rent”. However what’s stopping artists and Spotify to work where they simply eliminate the middlemen. Artists create the music. Post it on Spotify. And any revenues are split. Even if the split is not equal both parties get to make more money given that they get to keep what would otherwise be the record labels share. Why is this not possible?

One last point, the record labels,today, still stand to make a lot more money as there more songs pre Spotify that post Spotify and the listeners still want to listen to those. Eg if you grew up in the 80s you still want to listen to Micheal Jackson or Brittney spears today. and thst music is only available thru a record label today. However fast forward 20-30 years a lot of listeners will be post Spotify era and thier music could be the music that does not come from recod labels assuming Spotify starts revenue sharing with artists today and keeping the middlemen out of new music. All in all it’s about who owns the largest catalogs of music. Today and previously, most of it is in the hands of record labels. As such it’s quite centralized. but tomorrow it could be decentralized. And artist get paid based on how good they are.might still not be perfect but seems like a hell of a lot better than the record label based business model. There was probably a time when that business model made sense. When distribution and promoting a artist was hard. When the world worked pre digital speed. Today that business model just reeks of a cartel/robber Barron- esque behavior.

I don't know whether it was a news piece or a documentary, but it was on the life of Spotify founder. In that piece it was mentioned that Spotify did use their own already available music collection to populate the service with content. Once the service got little traction, they started making deals with indies and labels. The market was ripe for this because the music industry saw what was coming down the road after the Napster shock.

Spotify and Hulu were mostly funded by the industry. Hulu’s main investors were companies like NBC, that’s how they have all the typical network content. Spotify was also had heavy record label investment.

That’s why no one else is around. It was the industry secretly getting back into the online game after piracy ransacked them.

I remember spotify was pirating torrents at the very beginning. Saw that in some documentary

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