What Spotify Might Cost You

Spotify is a streaming music service that I have railed against on my blog Seven Days In, but people generally tell me that I am living in the past on this. I am not averse to the concept of Spotify but , as I see it , it is an impossible business model from the point of the producers, although Spotify themselves benefit hugely from it.

When a record is played on a radio station an artist is played for that play. I'm not sure what that is now, but it used to be £50 when the BBC played a record.

When a physical record is sold the artist receives a payment based on their contract and the buyer has a physical copy they can play as many times as they want in perpetuity, as well as the packaging which often enhances the release even further.

Even paid downloads benefit the artist, and the buyer has the music to play for life.(apart from iTunes who allegedly told Bruce Willis he couldn't leave his collection to his daughter because they were only rented , check here)

Many years ago Peter Gabriel was part of a company called WE2 that proposed a pay per play option for songs , but people did not go for the idea, but effectively Spotify is using that idea for the artists and the artist payment is miniscule , so unless you are Ed Sheeran or Adele you will not make any money from streaming.

When Daft Punk's "Random Access Memory" was the biggest selling album of the year they were paid about £13K for streaming listens , probably what they spent on lunch.

I remember seeing an advert for Deezer saying that they couldn't wait to hear what it would play next, but Deezer was doing the choosing. Most people want something familiar and are unlikely to try something new, so this effectively promotes an environment where new music is not needed. That means the music market stagnates , but streaming companies have enough music to satisfy their markets.

The other thing is that people expect streaming to be free, often Spotify is given as a "free" add on to various mobile phone plans and here comes the extra cost. If you stream on the move then you will use your data allowance to listen to your Spotify playlists. I don't know how much day that will be , but it will be significant. I know some plans include free social media , but most do not , so this is a way to get you to use more data.

I know how much I use uploading to Instagram and watching YouTube videos although I never hit my 6Gb a month on EE, but I see plans for tens of gigabytes a month, and this will be swallowed up by streaming video and music making money for the streaming service and the mobile networks.

With the push towards 5G you can download , stream and watch even faster , so the music will be streamed at a higher resolution as will video , and of course that will use a lot more data , lining the pockets of the mobile networks if you are not doing it over your home or free WIFI.

Today's devices have huge capacities , so if you download videos or music on your home network you have your own choice of music or film , with services like BBC iPlayer you can download to your device and not incur unnecessary data charges.

Again pay per play is not a good working model for the ones who produce the music.

So I will use some of your data allowance with the YouTube video for "Thieves Like Us" by New Order which is appropriate for the streaming companies.