Comment by rlu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rlu | Hacker News Reader

I pretty much exclusively use Spotify to listen to music. It's incredibly convenient. I love it.

It annoys me when artists decide not to participate. With Radiohead I at least 'kinda get it' in that their new album is a pay-your-price album, so sure whatever, fine. But for example, Taylor Swift's Red album is not there. What does she want me to do? Buy it on iTunes?? No thanks. If anything, it might make me want to pirate it.

What Spotify should do for these cases is what Xbox Music already does. If the song is not available for free (a-la Radiohead, or Taylor Swift) then you can purchase it just like on iTunes. Except that you get the benefit that it acts like any other song on their free catalog (syncing playlists etc. etc. etc.)

The only problem I see with this is that if it becomes an option, what would make an artist want to go the free route rather than the "pay to have" route? Then again, Xbox Music seems to be doing fine. Everything that is free on Spotify is free on Xbox Music (+ some others) and then Xbox Music gets the advantage in that many songs which just are not on Spotify are at least able to be purchased for ~1 dollar on Xbox Music.

I'm having trouble understanding your comment - because you explain exactly why artists would choose not to participate if there is a "paid" option, but then you say it annoys you when artists decide not to participate. Why does it annoy you?

Spotify has a discovery benefit, but it also robs track/cd sales. This is in contrast to something like Pandora, where the discovery aspect is just gravy, and a person still has to buy the tracks to listen on demand.

If an artist is being rational, they compare the discovery benefit to the track sales loss, and act accordingly. If a fan begrudges that choice to the extent of feeling justified in pirating, then what does that say about the fan? Spotify is actually complicit in reinforcing this attitude.

Maybe the happy medium is cutting the labels out of the deal, allowing artists to self publish on the platform and see larger cuts of the proceeds for their contribution to the network. $500/m and $1/bn aren't exactly chump change until you realize the artists are getting tiny percentages of those payouts. If Spotify were to offer a convenient distribution platform and enticing terms to ditch labels and self publish the might find a sweet spot. That being said, piracy is popular because it's easy and free, the artists aren't competing against it because everyone's a pirate, they're competing against it because it's a more convenient alternative. Skip out on the most popular platform and your fans will adopt the alternative with a path of least resistance.

Just a couple years ago, iTunes availability was seen as a more convenient alternative to piracy. Now apparently Spotify makes iTunes so relatively annoying that piracy is preferable. I don't really think B flows from A, not without a lot of fans being encouraged to expect music for free when it isn't really free.

iTunes isn't that much more annoying than it used to be. People just started to feel more entitled to free music, encouraged by the newer services, and paying artists less. That's why it's a long slippery slope.

That's how Google Music does it, too. It has the All Access streaming service, and you can also continue to buy songs. And the streaming part is better than Spotify, too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com