5 Ways to Fix the Streaming Music Crisis

  • Save

1. Stop free use, and develop users’ willingness to pay.

Amongst the millions of ‘users’ that streaming services claim, the proportion of real subscribers who pay the advertised price is an absolute minority.  However, if everyone paid – even if it was just a couple of pounds or dollars – everything would be different.  The advent of paying streaming services like Apple Music is terrifying to services like Spotify or Deezer, who have made free access their unique selling point to reel in users.

2. Reform reporting methods, and encourage a more fair distribution of the money that comes in.

A subscriber paying $9.99 per month listening to nothing but the saxophonist John Saxo probably thinks that money goes to John Saxo (after deductions for taxes, royalties and the platform).  But this is not the case: those contributions are lost amongst the much larger numbers of mainstream music listeners.  The money is distributed on a pro-rata basis, and this will always work to the disadvantage of minority-interest collections.

In the age of Big Data, rebuilding the moral and financial contract that has always connected fans to artists should be simple.  In the physical world, big distribution doesn’t force the artisan cobbler to adopt the same economic model and distribution system as the industrial shoe manufacturer.  It shouldn’t be the same in streaming music.

Rights holders: please understand that your income from streaming platforms, for the time being, depends upon the success of others, and by the same system your revenue is crushed by the pro-rata system.

targeting
  • Save

3. Target offers and tailor platforms.

No consumer is more discerning and diverse than the music lover, but current platforms display a grinding homogeneity that is not much improved by complex algorithms.  These systems don’t facilitate serendipity, no matter what the hype may say.  By creating different subscription tiers, platforms will create a pyramid of user willingness to pay, which will in turn increase ARPU.

This pyramid can be created through various methods, most of which have yet to be invented: packages based on varying sound quality, niche music catalogues, or the offer of add-ons (see below).  Real user targeting will be done by setting up a system of recommendations by real music experts according to style, excellence in any given musical genre, or giving more back to the rights holders in this or that category of music.

This is all powered by the unique relationship that a platform is able to create between their subscribers and their suppliers.  This is why, for example, nearly 50% of the money paid out by Qobuz (my streaming service) goes to classical and jazz music, while it is probably less than 10% elsewhere.

4. Dare to choose selective distribution!

It’s time to break with the religion of “all collections, everywhere” and instead dare to take up selective distribution.  Let’s reject the myth that says “free use boosts promotion,” and stop giving content away for free on certain platforms and selling it for a price elsewhere.  Selective distribution in the era of streaming doesn’t mean refusing streaming flat-out, but rather working closely with platforms that are well-adapted to premium add-ons – and daring to then hold these products back from other platforms who are perhaps not as well-positioned.

Let’s make a comparison to audio-visual media: you’ll never find all the new film releases on Netflix or Sky Go.  In the same way, whether you are a music producer or an artist, you can’t permit your new products to be squandered on a music streaming site for minuscule revenues – at least not unless the platform offers you an additional monetization solution which is appropriately adapted to your product.

5 . Implement optional subscription add-ons.

In order to better serve collections which are in development or in the process of being created, ultimately, a model of incremental subscription is needed.  This would consist of combining a generalized subscription package with a system of additional purchases. In the old days of iTunes downloads this was called “à la carte,” but is better renamed “definitive rights acquisition,” as opposed to the “temporary rights” associated with a streaming subscription.

This is where the model of tomorrow lies: acquiring “supplements” to a subscription, consisting of this or that recording, label, quality, exclusivity, or previews not included in the subscription – and ultimately creating additional value for the rights holder.

Yves Riesel is the co-founder of the Qobuz (qobuz.com), a streaming and download music service based in France. 

Top image by Neil Turner, middle image by Nicolo J, both licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC by 2.o).

39 Responses

  1. Remi Swierczek

    Very logical suggestions but you forgetting about “fatal problem” of premium, subscription based streaming!

    Global limit of Daniel Ek’s DOPE is at just $15B dollars with ads it gives us $20B music industry in 2025.

    Video games will go over $100B this year.
    Movie streaming and rentals will go over $100B this year.

    Music – the most used and abused medium will monetize at $14B this year!
    Time for WAKE UP CALL and some creativity and pride – we have been at $60B in 1999.

    Again, Doug Morris and Lucian Grainge should quit on their own. It will open the door to accidental MIRACLE!

      • Remi Swierczek

        I am actually impressed. Still we have $65B global Radio opportunity! Pandora and XM and all streamers could part of that opportunity.
        Just remove tune and artist info from displays and convert Google, Shazam and Soundhound piracy propellants to cashiers of new and primitive $100B music industry. Just no idea what to do with YouTube and VEEVOOO grotesque.

  2. superduper

    I still think that even paid subscription services will not do any good. The reason why is because I don’t think the royalty rates will ever be high enough to justify it, even though it may be slightly better than free ad-based revenue.

    • Paul Resnikoff

      I’m not so sure of that. If there were perhaps 100 million paying subscribers — and, I mean $9.99 paying subscribers — I think the music industry would look very, very different. The problem is that there’s a fraction of that, and a massive multiple of that on free. But look at the revenue breakdowns between free and paid users, it’s a staggering difference. Ad-supported doesn’t support much.

      • superduper

        I don’t really see a staggering difference between paid and unpaid royalty rates. Also, I think that even if there were in theory 100 million paid subscribers, it’s not really the gross revenue, but the net revenue per capita. Because you have access to everything when you subscribe to a streaming service, it will always be that the revenue will be split between all artists. That will not change. Because of this, I believe that streaming royalty rates will always be devalued and there will always be a a more significant disparity between the struggling artists and successful artists than if artists were paid directly for their work. Again, even if the gross revenue may be higher, the net revenue per capita would still be low.
        Even when one considers the idea of payouts based on what you have listened to (like if you listen to a particular artist for 90% of the month, 90% of the payouts go to that artist) that still favors the superstars because they would have a larger base audience. Even if streaming payouts are slightly better per stream, I doubt there would be any significant difference in terms of positive impact except for of course the big name artists.
        Streaming services always favor the highest class of superstars because they can supplement comparatively low streaming revenue with auxiliary means, like massive tours, promotional ventures, merchandise sales. They can also so-called “make it up on volume” better than most smaller artists because they naturally would have higher play counts than smaller artists. Whenever you hear arguments for streaming that include points like these, you have to realize that everything mentioned ALWAYS favors bigger artists. The crazy thing is, though, people may even start to see big name artists struggling in the long run because this is such an unsustainable business model. Even big name artists can use their main selling point as a loss leader for only so long.
        I realize that the music industry has always had a strong disparity between big, major label artists and smaller, independent artists. But because of the way that streaming works in terms of its business model, it will always be fundamentally flawed and I think the only way to make it work is to use it as a promotional tool to buy albums, instead of an ultra-low cost way to cannibalize them.

      • renon

        100m subscribers at $10 a month is 1b a month = 12b a year. Still not enough. We need to get to 60B just to bring us back to 1999.

        We also have pro-rata which makes sure that everyone remains poor.

        We need to start get back to reality. People used to pay $16 a CD when they had much less money than they do now. …selective distribution is the answer.

        • superduper

          What does selective distribution mean in this context?

    • Name2

      Great example of why people should be able to hear music before they put coin on the counter.

      Thanks!!

      • Minneapolis Musician

        So you are in favor of free streaming?

    • FarePlay

      You want us to believe you pay for anything? Of course Reverbnation is going to say that. Did you guys graduate from high school?

      • Minneapolis Musician

        That was my site. I am the musician. That was my track.

        No, I don’t sell anything or get any revenue from sales on Reverbnation. Who does, really? Just the ones pushed by big marketing.

        Music sales from recordings for unknown artists are a dream that never really came to be.

  3. CA

    “The advent of paying streaming services like Apple Music is terrifying to services like Spotify or Deezer, who have made free access their unique selling point to reel in users.”

    I think you have it backwards. Apple wants free but is in a bad spot because Spotify has a free tier.

    • Paul Resnikoff

      Actually, there is terror, but terror sometimes spurs action. And the picture here is far, far more complicated. The reason is that Apple’s push of a free music tier was actually created in conjunction with the major labels (with Jimmy Iovine a key liaison) to force rival services to do the same. In subsequent licensing negotiations with Spotify, for example, the majors planned to forced three-month paid windows and establish a new world order.

      Enter Spotify’s extremely aggressive, mega-million dollar lobbying initiative, which spurred considerable oversight into this perceived collusion, and created too much heat for all participants involved. Labels couldn’t afford that; Apple didn’t want to spoil its iTunes dominance. The result is that Spotify set US gov’t attack dogs on the situation, and get to keep their free tier.

      The rest of the ‘terror’ comes from Apple’s enormous size, and a war chest surpassing $200 billion. Apple can fight a long, long war; Spotify will only last a few more years without a massive liquidation event.

      Incidentally, it will be interesting to see if Apple demands a greater free tier of its own. Apple has money, but why blow money on something completely non-competitive? It doesn’t make sense.

    • FarePlay

      Why would Apple want to get into a guaranteed money losing business? They’ve already done their IPO and they have to answer to their stockholders, who look at actual earnings. Spotify on the other hand is playing the start-up cash burn card, for as long as they can.

  4. Name2

    Like DRM, all of these cunning stunts only hurt the few honest-to-goodness, money-spending customers music actually has left. Just go back to suing people and get it over with.

      • Name2

        Yes, because the US court system is just hired private security/tech support for entertainment companies.

        • name3

          In the Exact same way that your tax dollars go to police arresting shoplifters out of stores, burglars out of houses. The same way that a shop owner can go to prison (not to mention lose his business) if his store is knowingly being used in the commission of a crime. The same way that helping a fugitive excape makes you an accessory to a crime.

          • FarePlay

            You desperately need some new material. And find out how stay down works.

  5. DavidB

    I agree with a lot of this, but not with: ‘The money is distributed on a pro-rata basis, and this will always work to the disadvantage of minority-interest collections.’ If this is meant to imply that streaming is necessarily worse for minority-interest genres than a purchase-based system, it is obvious nonsense. In a purchase system, money is also distributed pro-rata: other things being equal, if a million people buy a Taylor Swift record, and only a thousand people buy your free-form jazz record, Taylor will get a thousand times as much as you. In the absence of subsidies, rewards are proportional to popularity.

    Whether in practice streaming works to the disadvantage of minority genres (relative to mainstream pop) can only be determined by the evidence. It all depends on how the availability of streaming affects people’s listening habits, and we don’t yet know this. One might expect, for example, that people would listen to a broader range of genres and artists than under a purchase system, so that their contribution to artists’ revenue (whether through subscriptions or advertising) would be spread more widely. This might work against minority genres, or it might be quite the opposite. Either way, I don’t see that a payment system to channel revenue directly from the listener to the artists they are listening to would in itself make any difference, since in aggregate the revenue would still be pro rata to usage.

    • Faza (TCM)

      We do have some evidence, for example: this study for KODA in Denmark, conducted two years ago. One thing it does show (as have all studies before it, going back to a similar examination of the P2P piracy market done by PRS for Music in the UK) is that the streaming market is incredibly top-heavy (with 5% of artists accounting for 90% of all streams; most of those going to the top 1%). Segmentation in the absolute top tier may be somewhat less hit-oriented than in the retail market, but as true niche markets go, streaming is very much a lost cause.

      Interestingly, the study is primarily concerned with possible impacts of switching to a per-user distribution and it seems this will benefit the most popular artists. As I understand it: streams from less intensive users are worth more than those from power users (because the fixed subscription fee is divided amongst a smaller number of streamed songs) and it is the power users that are most likely to sample niche content (which makes sense, considering the human side of things). The effects do not seem to be too big however, probably due to averaging out.

      So, yeah. Changing the distribution model is unlikely to benefit niche music. Quite the opposite, most likely. Otherwise, there is absolutely fuck-all that can be done to fix the ill-fit of revenue model to different scales of business under the current system, because streaming is a “one-size-doesn’t-exactly-fit-anybody” proposition.

    • Anonymous

      Your comment contains some good points but isn’t persuasive.

      From the article: “A subscriber paying $9.99 per month listening to nothing but the saxophonist John Saxo probably thinks that money goes to John Saxo.”

      In a purchase-based system, money goes where the consumer intends for it to go. Taylor Swift may still make 1,000x what John Saxo makes, but that’s okay: that’s where the consumers wanted their money to go.

      The subscription pro-rata payout system distorts that, with money going to artists that the individual consumer may never have intended it to go to. If I pay $10 to listen specifically to John Saxo, and in fact listen only to John Saxo, it’s right that John Saxo receive the money – he created something that I valued sufficiently to pay $10 to get, and he should receive the resulting benefit. (ignoring Spotify’s cut for simplicity.)

      Keep in mind that it’d be easy for Spotify to do this – they already have all the information necessary. The very fact that Spotify chose the more opaque pro rata payments system over the equally easy and more accurate direct payments system suggests that there is some other benefit to using the pro rata system.

      The most likely benefit, based on what we know about Spotify and the major labels, is that the pro rata system results in major labels and artists getting more than they would under a direct payments system.

      Anything that introduces distortions between what the buyer intends to pay for and what the seller in fact receives payment for is a bad thing: when the transactions don’t accurately reflect the true economic situation, you’re left with a lot of guesswork as well as room for unfairness and lack of transparency.

      Also, no artist or label gives a damn about “in aggregate” – and they shouldn’t because it’s irrelevant to them: it’s like saying “oh, well, you’ve been fired but in aggregate the country’s economy is doing much better.”

      The only thing that matters to individual artists on this issue is whether the money people in fact spent to consume their music actually makes it to them. Who are you, or Spotify, to say, “well it’s possible you got shortchanged here but don’t worry because in aggregate it probably works out for everyone”? You get to make that decision about your own income, NOT about someone else’s income.

      Maybe a payment system that more accurately channels payments from consumers to the artists whose music they consume wouldn’t make a significant difference in the amount those artists receive (I disagree; I think it’d make a significant difference in some cases).

      Even then, it’s still better by virtue of being a more accurate reflection of the exchanges (payment for music consumption) and consumer demand, with less room for inadvertent distortion or intentional manipulation.

      • sharky laguana

        Whoever you are, unless I’m already talking to you, get in touch with me. You are dead on the money here on all points. You can reach me at sharky AT bandago DOT com

    • Troglite

      I think you misunderstood. I believe the author is referring to the fact that each of the “all you can eat” subscriptions being offered to consumers produce a variable “per stream” pay rate for the artist. The result for niche artists is that the amount of the check they receive can seem completely disconnected from the number of times their songs were played. Let’s say that in June I receive 10,000 steams and spotify pays me $10. In july, I might receive 20,000 streams but spotify may only pay me $15. The formula that produces that outcome determines the per stream pay rate is based on the total number of streams across all artists on spotify. So if my plays double but the total across all of spotify quadruples, I get paid less instead of more even as both my fanbase and spotify’s business expands.

      This is why the market badly needs to add legitimate “pay as you go” options while actively resisting large scale pirating operations, including YouTube. If the future is music flowing like water, what we have created is a flood. IMHO, establishing controlled, windowed access at reasonable rates with minimal transactional friction is the path out of this disaster. But that’s a process that may take years to occur. A lot of good people will be hurt during that transition.

      I think this author is exploring some interesting ideas that can help improve the odds of survival. There’s actually a fair amount of opportunity when you look at how poorly the mainstream services addresses the needs of enthusiastic jazz and classical music fans living outside of the United states. EDM-focused services like soundcloud and Beatport can also serve as interesting case studies for how to serve and monetize a niche music market.

      • DavidB

        Well, you (and the other commenter) have spent quite a lot of time arguing against things that I didn’t say. I was objecting to the claim by the OP that the standard streaming payment system works to the disadvantage of minority genres. I pointed out that in principle it doesn’t. In practice, it may or it may not. We just don’t know. The other commenter has claimed that the system works to the advantage of major labels and their artists. But if it does (which has not been proved), this is not a consequence of the present payment system, but of the greater bargaining power of the major labels. If the system were based on direct individual payments, the rate of payment would still vary according to bargaining power – unless the legislature stepped in and insisted on a uniform rate. In the absence of legal regulation, the free-form jazz artist (or his/her representatives) would be competing against the representatives of Jay Z and Miley Cyrus. How do you think that is going to work out?

        • Troglite

          @DavidB wrote “If this is meant to imply that streaming is necessarily worse for minority-interest genres than a purchase-based system, it is obvious nonsense. ”

          I don’t believe this is an accurate interpretation of the author’s message. “Streaming” is much too broad. The specific issue raised was the “pro rata basis” used by all you can eat subscription pricing models. It’s not about rent vs. buy. My only intent was to clarify that for your consideration.

          We can have different interpretations. I feel no need to “argue”.

          Is it fair to state that the spirit of your point was that digital distribution in all its forms including streaming can in fact represent a net benefit for niche markets? If that is a reasonably accurate approximation of your point, I agree.

          If, however, you’re suggesting that artists take a wait and see attitude regarding the pro-rata pricing models used by companies like spotify and Google because the scraps they produce may still represent a small net gain… well, then we truly are in complete disagreement.

          • Sharky Laguana

            Guys it’s really simple:
            If your listener base is made of subscribers with “above average” usage, than you want Pro-Rata. If your listener base is made of subscribers with below average usage than you want Subscriber-Share / User-Centric.
            The key here is how “Average” is defined, and the problem is that the Average is WAY above the median, and this can be proven mathmematically. This is because usage is a positive skewed distribution set: most people are doing between 200-500 streams per month, but the handful that are doing 10,000 plus per month are raising the average 2-6x. The result: most subscribers are below average.
            So if you are an artist just starting out, it’s very unlikely you will get a lot of plays from above average subscribers, which means you are disadvantaged.
            The study in Denmark by Rex Rasmus had a very small pool of subscribers, was looking at just one month of data, only looked at the top 5000 artists, and it also included freemium subscribers which brought the average down a lot. It did not look at how artists fared over time, or how widely the money was spread. Also keep in mind the results are deeply heterogenuous: there are winners and losers in every segment and category. Saying indies do better under pro-rata *in aggregate* is like saying a neighborhood does better *in aggregate* because one person in the neighborhood won the lottery. You need to look at how everyone does, not just the averages.

          • Troglite

            @Sharky. I believe your comments clarified the topics being discussed in a helpful way. So, thanks for not being a troll! 🙂

  6. Tim F.

    So what you are saying is… Apple is currently doing the most to solve the “crisis.” They are the only ones doing #1 (and this is certainly the most important), and they are doing #2 (http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/04/kobalt-amra-apple-music/) and #5 (iTunes Match, still selling downloads, etc.). I’d argue that #3 and #4 are debatable. Yves should have a conversation with Paul.

    • Sharky Laguana

      Just to correct you, Apple is not doing #2. I wish they were, but they are not.

  7. DavidB

    “But if I have to pay per stream at a fixed rate, and anyone can stream anything as many times as they want, I may have to pay out more than I bring in”

    Sorry to have to state the obvious, but this point would apply equally to fixed all-you-can-eat subscriptions, so it is not a reason for YouTube to prefer an ad-based system over paid subscriptions.

  8. Here's How You're Wrong

    Google/youtube wants ad based system over a fixed price because consumers don’t want to pay. It’s simple.

    You’re imaging some type of per-stream minimum deal, which Google/YouTube wouldn’t agree to – REGARDLESS of the revenue source, whether ad-based or subscription based.

    No one would agree to that. Indeed, no seller would really be in their right mind to demand it. “I want $0.10 per stream, regardless of how many streams you sell for your fixed revenue.” What?

    Services generally pay on a formula like: a) income x b) artists streams/total user streams x c) royalty rate. Agreeing to a hard per-stream royalty is suicide for the service – and copyright owners, as businesses, know this.

    To answer your question about YouTube being entitled to safe harbor protection even though it isn’t a passive ISP, it has to do with over-arching policy considerations that go beyond the technical wording of the DMCA.

    If Federal judges were to force Google/YouTube and other similar upload sties to engage in filtering of content before it appears, that would put the upload sites in the position of having to act as an enforcement agent and censor. This would be bad, for several significant reasons.

    First, copyright problems will likely never trump issues of empowering and indeed obligating private corporations to act as de-facto government enforcement agents and censors. Ask a judge if he’d rather have 1m copyright infringement cases a year vs. putting all of the authority and responsibility over copyright issues in the hands of a private company and they will tell you – every time – that they’d rather see all the copyright cases.

    Second, even if they DID want to place that level of authority and responsibility with private corporations, what would the likely result of that be? Tell Google/YouTube that THEY will be responsible and liable for any copyright infringement that appears on their site and what do you think they will do? They will shut down. They are not going to ACCEPT the role of copyright arbitrator and being on the hook if they get it wrong. They will take the safe route and simply not allow ANY even remotely-questionable material to be posted. i.e. de-facto censorship.

    Third, fair use defenses are very fact/case specific and demand considerable attention to detail by very knowledgeable jurists. It is a truly subtle area of law that is better left to individual resolution, as opposed to some mass “take down and stay down” rule that would be applicable, across the board. The user community has done a good job of making this argument.

    Finally (for now), the large copyright aggregators haven’t helped themselves much in this area, by not maintaining or being able to prove true ownership, actual copyright infringement, etc. Look at the YouTube cases and you will see that the record of alleged copyright infringement is highly compromised. Copyright owners claiming infringement for files that THEY actually uploaded, themselves, claims of infringement for works that they cannot prove ownership of, etc.

    In the end, even though YouTube might seem to not fit entirely into the definition of an ISP as laid out in the DMCA, I think that judges got it right, nonetheless, on policy grounds. Holding YouTube liable would almost certainly lead to a worse result than simply continuing to have series of individual copyright claims – even repetitive ones.

  9. Remi Swierczek

    “Google/youtube wants ad based system over a fixed price because consumers don’t want to pay. It’s simple.”

    This line has same level of stupidity as Google executives in charge of music activities.

    $150B music industry can double Google with just minor changes on the game board.
    Consumers don’t want to pay? Who hallowed for it? …UMG?
    TIME TO FORCE THEM TO PAY FOR MUSIC – easy task, for Google with discovery moment monetization!

    • GUEST

      Consumers don’t want to pay.. what a stupid excuse typical of greedy corporation exec..
      These music services are just gonna ruin everything for great musicians. We live in a society where everything is paid for fairly but musicians the real good ones the hard working peace spreading happy and full of good vibes people are being so disrespected and let down.. FFS cant all you tech nerds comeup with a solution that actually works that is actually honest and open and gives some love back to the musicians.. for the past 4 years or longer I have been visiting this digital news site and its always the same fucking rant.. Artist and labels complaining about not being able to make money from music. You all need to grow up and wake the fuck up the whole system is broken not just the music biz.. trying to fix this from within and not going after the root cause is like throwing snowballs and missing the target.. Fix the Internet service providers who are the first to profit from your content. To do that you first need to have a Law in place that forces Internet service providers to pay content creators.. to fix this streaming issue.. forget ad based , and fixed rate system.. people fans need to pay per stream with a topup voucher ,or by buying stream credits..
      1 credit is 1 stream .. each stream should be valued according to more or less a download and gives the fan an option to have that track offline on their phone for a one fixed rate ( 0.90 ,0.80 ,0,50 ) .. Regarding this advertising, I dont see billboards inside Museums promoting coca cola… I think Music needs to be respected more.. its Art and right now its become something from a factory plant off of a conveyer belt. You want to give that style of music away for free go for it, but real musicians deserve quality representation by music services and not just be thrown out there into the wild and become a % in the stock market..
      and what labels should do is sue google,facebook and all these music services who have collected large sums of advances from the use of the content and distribute these large investor funds into the pockets of the musicians these large corporations (really a handfull of greedy execs ) have made billions thanks to the content creators… Lets never forget how these big corporations came to be so powerful .. Its only because of the content creators who uploaded their music. not realizing and not being able to read through the fine print that they were all scammed .. Musicians Need to get really Loud on these topics and unite to battle this corporate ship thats taking advantage of them and abusing their music …

      • Jim

        “people fans need to pay per stream with a topup voucher ,or by buying stream credits..”

        that sounds about right.

        I don’t think that streams should cost 50 cents though.

        I don’t think 1 stream = 1 credit. There should be more flexibility.

        Unknown band on playlist – 1 credit. The first hour of Taylor Swift’s new video – 500 credits, when 1 credit = 1/10th of 1 cent.

        Micropayments seems to be key here. You buy the points, the credits, in bulk. You can’t have a credit card or a paypal hit, with money removed, every time you play a song. The credit card companies and paypal want real money, not fractions of a penny, to make transactions. Maybe you give a gift card to a little kid with $50 on it and when they use up that $50, they get another one.

        Musicstore.com will put the audio and video files on their server and musicstore.com will serve as a gateway to those files. The band will be able to create widgets on musicstore.com, and they’ll share those widgets to their facebook people, on their website. “Watch the new video now for 50 cents” The week after that first day, a quarter, the month after that a dime, etc.

        There are spotify widgets that won’t let you play the song unless you’re logged in. This would work similar to that, you have to log in, you have to pay musicstore.com, the widget will tell you how much the audio or video costs to play, what your balance is, etc.

        Muse released dig down yesterday 5/18. 2 Million + views. If Muse charged a quarter a play, that’s a half a million dollars in a day. Now, I don’t think that everybody who is playing the video on youtube for nothing is going to pay a quarter, but I’d think that a lot would. When new content is released, acts should be able to make a good chunk of money immediately through this method. After a short period of time, the songs can go to youtube and/or spotify and/or everywhere else the acts want the video to go.

        Whatever the specifics are, I’d think that new content should be expensive for short periods, bands should get that money, it should be easy to do for acts and consumers,

  10. David W.

    Every one of these streaming servives are missing out on a massive market, a multi-million dollar market, that is currently going untapped while they rack their heads on how to get around the bloated licensing costs. It’s hilarious that these same people are dead set against hearing or considering to hear innovative concepts that could not only pad their current losses of licensing but revolutionize the entirety of music content and it’s accessibility.
    Obviously, most of these people are staunchly set in the enticing new world of spending tons of money on models that any idiot can see aren’t sustainable.
    These problems have already been solved but no one will even entertain the solutions.

    There’s an entire untapped market waiting to be exposed and someone is going to laugh all the way to the bank at these behemoths short-sided tunnel vision and desperate cash grab attempts.