<
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/02/18/how-our-convoluted-copyright-regime-explains-why-spotify-chose-joe-rogan-over-neil-young/>
"Spotify’s decision to hitch its star to podcaster and
font-of-COVID-misinformation Joe Rogan has sparked a wave of pushback from
musicians, some of whom–among them Neil Young, India Arie, and Joni
Mitchell–have pulled their music from Spotify in protest. Spotify, for its
part, has stood firmly by Rogan.
That Spotify would stand by a show that consistently undermines vaccines and
blithely spreads misinformation is disappointing–but, financially, it’s
perfectly predictable.
The short version:
The law and economics of music streaming lead to one inevitable result: Spotify
pays money when it streams music. It makes money when it streams podcasts.
Therefore, Spotify has an incentive to keep people using Spotify — just not for
music.
The legal regime around music licensing makes breaking even — let alone turning
a profit — nearly impossible. Because the industry is notoriously secretive
about its financials (a problem in and of itself), raw data is hard to come by.
But the fact remains that investors (and industry observers) agree that music
streaming as a loss-leader — something that incurs a net loss for the service
doing it, in the hopes of potentially looping consumers into the parent
company’s product ecosystem. Apple Music and Amazon Music, the second and third
largest streaming services by market share, both operate at a loss. Spotify,
which has been in the US market since 2011, turned its first profit in 2021. It
is still unclear whether it will manage to repeat the achievement.
In short, experience indicates that a streaming service that plays only music
will consistently lose money. And while this is a complex issue with many
moving parts, one of the biggest is the law — the market it creates, and the
behavior it incentivizes."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
