Earlier this week a guest post "On Withholding Music From Spotify & The New Economics Of Album Releases" by Scott Perry of New Music Tipsheet and Sperry Media set off a heated discussion among Hypebot readers. It also led to a call with Spotify that left Perry questioning his previous assumptions.
"I had an amazing conversation with the folks from Spotify this morning, really helped me see all this from another angle. So I'm gonna play devil's advocate – against myself!I've been focused on my peer group, a set of hard-core music fans who are ultra-wired. And yes, their purchasing has focused more on the must-have releases, while their streaming consumption has increased.BUT you have to realize that less than 1% of Americans use streaming services, so it is hard to tell what kind of impact streaming has truly had on purchasing habits for the country at large.AND on top of this, streaming services are winning over age groups that have never spent a PENNY on music — you project the growth among the 20something music consumer by offering an easier, cleaner alternative to file sharing, and you can see the potential size of the market.From what I was shown, keeping music off streaming services mainly leads to an increase in consumption via YouTube (which pays out less), P2P networks, and less savory streaming services.And can you really measure what impact streaming has had on any of last year's #1 sellers, or any release for that matter? Did Spotify's 2011 chart topper, Foster the People, really suffer less sales because of more streams? Or were they able to get a larger fan base because of their ubiquity?Conversations like this are happening at management and labels every day. How we move forward will be a delicate balance, since consumers are moving towards streaming models whether we like it or not.The biggest challenge any of us have is to unilaterally foster the growth of this emerging revenue model, so that it grows from add-on revenue to being bigger than the revenue streams it will inevitably replace."- Scott Perry
Read the original post and get involved in the discussion here.
