Artists Rights Advocates Make Gains in 2015… Web/Tech Admissions Laid Bare.

So many of the issues we’ve been talking about for years are finally becoming part of the larger and more mainstream conversations about artists rights and an ethical internet.

Seems like there is a little bit more than a slight draft blowing on house of cards that Silicon Valley has built. Here’s a quick recap.

FREE, UNLIMTED, AD-SUPPORTED, ON DEMAND STREAMING IS UNSUSTAINABLE.

Pandora CEO Mike McAndrews first started teasing this talking point during an earnings call in October. You can read those comments at Re/Code. But it was the more direct article McAndrew’s authored for Business Insider that really cemented what we’ve been saying all along…

“This gray market is unsustainable. If consumers can legally listen to free on-demand music permanently without converting to paying models, the value of music will continue to spiral downward to the benefit of no one.”

There is no turning back from this admission.

It’s funny how in years past so many in the music and tech communities could not and would not admit to this simple fundamental truth often telling musicians the true value of their platform was “exposure” so artists could “tour and sell t-shirts”. Well it now looks like the wheels have been run off that nonsense for good.

What would be really great is to see Pandora join the fight with artists against Ad-Funded Piracy. Pandora, Spotify, YouTube and every other Ad-Supported music platform must be aware of the fact that the downward pressure from these infringing pirate sites not only diminishes the value of music, but also the value of advertising on legitimate and licensed paltforms.

WINDOWING WORKS. ASK ADELE, TAYLOR SWIFT AND THE MOVIE BUSINESS.

Taylor Swift, Adele, Beyonce, Prince, Coldplay, The Black Keys, Thom Yorke and other artists have proved that Hits Don’t Need Spotify, but rather Spotify Needs Hits. The Wall Street Journal reports that Spotify is caving in on windowing.

Now, the service is caving in, according to people familiar with the matter.

In private talks, Spotify has told music executives that it is considering allowing some artists to start releasing albums only to its 20 million-plus subscribers, who pay $10 a month, while withholding the music temporarily from its 80 million free users. The company is only interested in withholding albums that can be kept off of other free music sites, such as Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube, for the same amount of time, one of these people said.

There is no turning back from this admission.

This means that Spotify has admitted that it is NOT a discovery medium, it is a retail outlet. Spotify is the digital cut-out bin offering the lowest amount of value to artists. The big problem for Spotify now is who decides who is a lessor or greater artist? Who is going to have that conversation with artists and managers that they are a lessor artist and not worthy of Spotify’s stamp of approval to only be streamed to paying subscribers? Ironically, but predictably the new boss is worse than the old boss.

As with Pandora’s admission about unlimited free streaming being unsustainable, Spotify also recognizes that Ad-Funded Piracy, particularly of the YouTube variety (and mentioned by name) must be managed effectively for windowing to work.

YOUTUBER’S GET PIRATED ON FACEBOOK EXACTLY HOW MUSICIANS GET PIRATED ON YOUTUBE, AND THEY DON’T LIKE IT.

Here’s a shocker. YouTuber’s who create original content through their own investment of time, money and resources are outraged when Facebook users “Freeboot” (aka Pirate) those videos depriving the original creator of the revenue. Hank Green writes a post on Medium that breaks it down.

According to a recent report from Ogilvy and Tubular Labs, of the 1000 most popular Facebook videos of Q1 2015, 725 were stolen re-uploads. Just these 725 “freebooted” videos were responsible for around 17 BILLION views last quarter. This is not insignificant, it’s the vast majority of Facebook’s high volume traffic.

There is no turning back from this admission.

Every argument that has been used against musicians, filmmakers and other creators for using the DMCA to protect their work suddenly takes on new dimensions when the tables are turned.

Larry Lessig had convinced a generation that they we’re being criminalized because musicians were “out of touch” with the “sharing economy”. When musicians issued DMCA notices to YouTube they were vilified, taunted and publicly shamed “Sorry that video is no long available due to a copyright claim by the artist.”

THE DMCA IS NOT A “LICENSE” FOR INFRINGEMENT, COX LOSES SAFE HARBOR IN JURY VERDICT. 

Perhaps the single greatest ruling of the year involves Cox Communications losing it’s safe harbor under the DMCA. Digital Music News reports on the jury verdict.

Ultimately, the court found the situation to be more complicated than that, with Cox now ruled guilty of both contributory and willful contributory copyright infringement by a federal jury.  The jury award is $25 million, though that probably represents a small prelude to damages that could ultimately push into the hundreds of millions.

There is no turning back from this verdict.

For those of you keeping score at home it is the DMCA abuse that has been used as a shield against copyright infringement liability by the internet and web/tech communities. Many businesses including many ISP’s and content hosting platforms such as YouTube have used the DMCA to build massively profitable businesses that are largely comprised of infringing works, otherwise known as User Pirated Content. That may be about to change thanks to this ruling.

THE PIRATE / FREE CULTURE MOVEMENT HAS FAILED. 

In a recent interview Peter Sunde, the founder of The Pirate Bay, the flagship of the free culture movement admitted he had failed and was giving up. The most interesting admission by Sunde is at the end of the interview where he echoes what we and other’s have been saying for years.

So, is there like a concrete thing we should focus on? Or do we need to aim for a new way of thinking? A new ideology?

Well, I think the focus needs to be that the internet is exactly the same as society.

There is no turning back from this admission.

There is an excellent open letter in response to Sunde by David Newhoff at The Illusion of More that is well worth reading with a detailed look at why Sunde has failed. But it is Sunde himself who makes the most profound admission.

We have centuries of rule of law for civilized societies that respect and protect individual creators rights in the authorship of their work. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 27, part 2 states “Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.”

The greatest irony here is that Sunde set up The Pirate Bay as an attack on capitalism, but he started by attacking artist’s and creator’s moral rights firsts. The paradox of “pirate logic” expands when one recognizes that The Pirate Bay was said to be making over four million dollars year. Yeah, that’s the way to fight capitalism, attack the ability for artists to survive and pocket four million a year. We couldn’t make this up if we tried.

SO LETS CHECK THE MATH HERE AT THE END OF 2015

  • Pandora attacks Spotify stating the Unlimited, Ad-Supported, On Demand, Free Streaming is Unsustainble.
  • Spotify attacks YouTube stating that Windowing Can Only Work If Windows Can Be Enforced.
  • YouTuber’s attack Facebook stating that Stealing and Monetizing their work Without Permission is bad.
  • Cox Communications attacked the DMCA stating “F*ck The DMCA” and lost.
  • Peter Sunde attacks Capitalism stating that… oh well, forget it… it’s nonsense.

There is a lot of work to be done, however these admissions set the framework for the future of these conversations going forward.

jean michael jarre IRM 1

[NOTE : THIS ARTICLE WAS UPDATED ON SATURDAY DEC 19 TO ADD THE PARAGRAPH ABOUT COX COMMUNICATIONS]
by Trichordist Editor

What Does BMG v. Cox mean for the Copyright Alert System

Music Technology Policy

A Virginia jury today handed down a $25 million judgement in favor of BMG for willful contributory copyright infringement by Cox Communications following what was apparently a very brief deliberation.  There will be much written about the case, but let’s think for a moment about what it means for the Copyright Alert System.

The judge in the case ruled earlier in pre-trial motions that Cox had failed to maintain an effective repeat infringer policy and procedure.  What seems to have been most compelling to the judge was that Cox didn’t do enough in terminating repeat infringers although the company did temporarily suspend access to a users Internet connection.

That is interesting because the Copyright Alert System (which involves the largest US ISPs) is essentially a system of notices and alerts that never results in what seemed to be important to the court in Cox–termination.  Which is actually just…

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by thetrichordist

Jury Rules For BMG on Cox Media P2P Piracy

Details are still slim, but it looks like a victory for artists and rightsholders.  Court agrees ISPs are supposed to have real policy for disconnecting repeat infringers.  Cox basically had a “fake” cutoff  policy and lost DMCA protections. Fox is now liable for user’s infringement.

Law360, Washington (December 17, 2015, 12:38 PM ET) — Internet service provider Cox Communications must pay music publisher BMG Rights Management $25 million for turning a blind eye to illegal music downloads by its subscribers, a Virginia federal jury found in a verdict Thursday, holding the ISP guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement.

http://www.law360.com/topnews/articles/739353/breaking-cox-must-pay-bmg-25m-for-user-piracy-jury-finds

by Dr. David C Lowery

Opt Out of Pandora’s Purchase of Rdio

Remember that Pandora is buying some assets from the Rdio bankruptcy with the intention to expand its webcasting service into a windowing service like Spotify?  How can they do that you may ask?  Don’t the licenses for those recordings and songs terminate in a bankruptcy?

Check your email–you may have received this notice from Pandora with the misleading subject line (with our emphasis):

We’re writing in regard to Pandora’s recent announcement that it plans to acquire certain assets from Rdio.  We’re currently working to finalize the transaction and are extremely excited about the opportunities this acquisition will bring not only to Pandora, but to the music industry as a whole.  With that in mind, we wanted to reach out regarding your company’s musical compositions embodied in sound recordings (the “Content”) stored on Rdio’s servers. As part of our acquisition of Rdio’s assets, we would like to retain the Content contained on these servers for possible inclusion in expanded Pandora service offerings in the future.

To be clear, Pandora will not launch expanded service offerings without acquiring the appropriate licenses. In addition, we will access the Content for possible ingestion into our Music Genome Project. We believe that retaining this Content is the surest way for Pandora to include your compositions upon the launch of any expanded service.  However, if you would prefer that your musical compositions not be included at this time, please follow the link below and indicate your intent to opt-out.

Pandora Media, Inc.
2101 Webster St., Suite 1650
Oakland, CA 94610

ConsentInquiries@pandora.com

Please click the following link if you wish to opt out:
https://www.musicreports.com%5Bredacted%5D

Why are they sending this email around?  If Pandora wants to launch an on-demand service, they’re very likely going to need negotiated licenses or licenses like the ones Rdio already holds.  This is all new to Pandora–Pandora executives are to hiding behind the federal government to protect their business and guarantee them a multimillion dollar payday for that 14 bathroom vacation house they’ve always wanted.

If Rdio has a license from you for your songs, Pandora may recognize that those licenses cannot be transferred from Rdio to Pandora in the Rdio bankruptcy.  Why else would they be asking you to opt in to a new license in this misleading email?  But wait…they never say they’re asking you to opt in, they’re offering you a chance to opt out.

And wait and see–if you don’t respond, they will say that they offered you a chance to opt out, so by not opting out they will deem you to have opted in.  Pretty scummy, right?  And how do we know this?  Because it’s what a scumbag would do.  Then naturally its what Pandora would do.  Very predictable.

The problem is that you have no idea what the business model will be of whatever new service it is that Pandora may launch, so why in the world would anyone ever agree to a license for a business before you even know what the business is?  How would you ever know what’s fair?

It seems like the only smart thing to do if you’ve gotten this email is to opt out immediately.  If you decide to opt out, it would probably be a good idea to follow up with a letter telling Pandora that you want no part of it.

Here’s an interesting side note.  Check out this sentence:

In addition, we will access the Content for possible ingestion into our Music Genome Project.

That sounds like Music Genome rights would be included in whatever license Pandora wants, and if you opt out, Pandora would not have the rights to “ingest” (lovely) your songs.  It sounds like Pandora might think they need a license to map your song into Pandora’s “Music Genome”.  That’s interesting because we do, too.

We’ve thought for a long time that Pandora needed a license for each song in the Music Genome and that the use of an artist’s name to create channels also needed a separate license for the use of the artist’s name.

Unless you’re in the habit of buying pigs in pokes, you could do worse than to opt out of any license you ever granted to Rdio and tell your publisher to do the same.  Once Pandora can tell you exactly what they want to do with your song, you can always change your mind.

After what they’ve done to artists and songwriters, who would ever trust these corrupt guys if the government didn’t force you to?

by thetrichordist

Pandora’s Shell Game with Royalty and Revenue

Here’s why Pandora should not get lower rates!

Music Technology Policy

thimblerig definition

Remember when Pandora used to complain about how royalty costs were over half their revenue?  Let’s take a look at their income statement for the last 12 months (“trailing twelve months” or “ttm”) from Yahoo! Finance:

Pandora Income Statement

“Total Revenue” of $1,100,000,000.  Because as Sean Parker will tell you, you know what’s really cool?  A billion dollars.

“Total Cash” of $363,600,000.

And at least at the moment, zero debt.

So stop right there–what do you think the response would be if you walked into any business school in the world (and not just the good ones) and asked the first MBA you met this question: How would you like a case study of a public company that has a $2.69 billion market cap, and that has government mandated vendors (that’s the artists and songwriters) whose selling price (aka royalties) is set below market by the government, and that has a billion…

View original post 592 more words

by thetrichordist

Music Director at WJCU Breaks with National Association of Broadcasters in Letter to Congress Supporting Artist Pay for Radio Play

Music Technology Policy

[Editor Charlie sez: It’s the end of 2015 and it’s time to look over the good news that came during the year.  For those MTP readers who missed the interview with Karoline Kramer-Gould, the heroic Music Director at tastemaker college radio station WJCU, here’s the reprint from Chris’s blog on Huffington Post.  If you already saw it, it’s well worth a re-read to remind you that we do have friends–a lot of friends–in radio who support treating artists fairly and who have devoted their lives to music every bit as much as artists and musicians have.  What makes Karoline so special is that she was willing to stand up for what she believes in and speak truth to the MIC Coalition.]

The United States is the only democracy in the world that does not pay recording artists for radio airplay. Artists and record labels have been fighting a legislative battle…

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by thetrichordist

An Open Response to Peter Sunde | David Newhoff @ TIOM

The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde has recently stated he’s given up. His interview can be read here. David Newhoff at the Illusion Of More responds to Sunde in a brilliant open letter that is required reading.

This is what comes of evangelizing the idea that it’s okay to exploit other people’s investment of real labor and real capital in goods and services that would otherwise have regenerative value. And exploiting these types of investments is precisely what you and your colleagues did with The Pirate Bay.

At least part of the Internet you don’t like is what comes of preaching to a whole generation that they can have whatever they want, free of charge, as long as it’s just a mouse click away.  And indeed, we are lately seeing the wheels come off that naive (and frankly predatory) idea. As the leaders of Pandora and Spotify begin to see that “freemium” isn’t a business model; as Facebook’s video service “freeboots” the promised ad-share value out of the pockets of YouTube creators; and as the global network of pirate sites is revealed to be a malware-infested and sophisticated black market that preys on individual consumers, you seem to have missed the point, Peter. The “fight” you lost is not with the MPAA and the principles of real capitalism—but with the unfettered greed you helped foster on the Internet you asked for.

READ THE ENTIRE POST AT THE ILLUSION OF MORE:
http://illusionofmore.com/an-open-response-to-peter-sunde/

by Trichordist Editor

Pirate Bay Founder: ‘I Have Given Up’ | Motherboard.Vice

This interview is fascinating on so many levels and deserving of it’s own in depth post to explore Sunde’s comments.  Here is just a teaser…

What is it exactly that you have given up?

Well, I have given up the idea that we can win this fight for the internet.

The situation is not going to be any different, because apparently that is something people are not interested in fixing. Or we can’t get people to care enough. Maybe it’s a mixture, but this is kind of the situation we are in, so its useless to do anything about it.

We have become somehow the Black Knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail. We have maybe half of our head left and we are still fighting, we still think we have a chance of winning this battle.

So what can people do to change this?

Nothing.

PLEASE READ THE FULL POST AT VICE-MOTHERBOARD:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/pirate-bay-founder-peter-sunde-i-have-given-up

by Trichordist Editor

Karma Meets Irony. “Freebooted” YouTuber’s Feel The Sting Of Piracy…

Watch and learn… We can’t make this up. Seriously you have to watch this video.

If we had a nickle for every YouTuber or Tech Journalist that advised musicians that “YouTube” was the SOLUTION TO PIRACY we’d be rich. Really rich. I mean, really, really, really rich. We we’re told YouTube was “promotion” and “exposure” to make money other ways.

We were told how if you just “made stuff people wanted” and “connected with fans” then they would reward you with loyalty and support. Musicians were told they were “whining” about piracy and that they should “adapt and evolve” to the “new way” and just embrace all of this “awesome internet empowered promotion”.

Funny how it is when the shoe is on the other foot. See here’s the thing. All of these YouTuber’s make money from the advertising that runs on their YouTube videos. But when those videos are ripped from YouTube by fans and uploaded to Facebook guess who doesn’t get paid? Yup, you guessed it… the YouTuber’s are getting stiffed and they don’t like it.

Where is Larry Lessig to help these folks out? Remember kids, don’t break the internet! It’s “sharing economy” afterall. You do the work and silicon valley shares the profits.

Soooo… when a musician’s work is pirated on Napster, Grockster, Kazaa, Limewire, The Pirate Bay, oh and YouTube… Musicians should “get over it”. But when a YouTuber’s work, labor and creative output is devalued, or worse monetized by a third party (Facebook) who doesn’t pay them anything, well then, you know, that’s “bad”.

The issue gained national attention this year earning editorials and reports from the likes of Slate, “Facebook’s Piracy Problem” in July. Time followed with a story in August, “This Is Facebook’s Biggest Problem With Video Right Now.” And recently as November AdWeek chimed in, “Facebook’s ‘Freebooting’ Piracy Problem Just Cost Casey Neistat 20 Million Views“.

This quote from the AdWeek story above kind of says it all…

But then they ran into a problem known as “freebooting,” which entails republishing videos on social sites without the consent of the folks who made the clips. In essence, it’s a practice of intellectual-property theft that’s plagued Facebook more than other digital platforms—PR-wise, at least—in recent months thanks to a few whistle-blowers.

They go on…

“I spent roughly a week issuing take downs on Facebook—a convoluted process,” Neistat told Adweek. “I crowdsourced the process of finding the freebooters because there is no way to search Facebook. In all, I took down well over 50 different posts—[which was] not nearly all of them. I simply gave up after a while. I anecdotally kept track of the view counts—over 20 million views on the videos I took down.”

Here’s more to chew on from a post by Hank Green on Medium, “Theft, Lies and Facebook Video“.

According to a recent report from Ogilvy and Tubular Labs, of the 1000 most popular Facebook videos of Q1 2015, 725 were stolen re-uploads. Just these 725 “freebooted” videos were responsible for around 17 BILLION views last quarter. This is not insignificant, it’s the vast majority of Facebook’s high volume traffic. And no wonder, when embedding a YouTube video on your company’s Facebook page is a sure way to see it die a sudden death, we shouldn’t be surprised when they rip it off YouTube and upload it natively.

Facebook’s algorithms encourage this theft.

Hmmmmm… where have we heard this story before? Maybe it was Daily Finance back in 2010, “Viacom vs. YouTube/Google: A Piracy Case in Their Own Words“.

• On July 19, Chen wrote to Hurley and Karim: “Jawed, please stop putting stolen videos on the site. We’re going to have a tough time defending the fact that we’re not liable for the copyrighted material on the site because we didn’t put it up when one of the co-founders is blatantly stealing content from from other sites and trying to get everyone to see it.” Four days later, Karim sent a link to the other founders, and Hurley told him that if they rejected it, they needed to reject all copyrighted material. Karim’s reply: “I say we reject this one but not the others. This one is totally blatant.”

• A July 29 email conversation about competing video sites laid out the importance to YouTube of continuing to use the copyrighted material. “Steal it!” Chen said , and got a reply from Hurley, “hmmm, steal the movies?” Chen’s answer: “we have to keep in mind that we need to attract traffic. how much traffic will we get from personal videos? remember, the only reason our traffic surged was due to a video of this type.”

Yup, Karma meets irony… How very interwebs… Ok, Ok, Ok… Sorry, just one more…

Everyone’s creativity deserves to be protected. All creators should be united against the illegal, infringing and exploitative uses of their work (especially for profit) without consent or compensation.

by Trichordist Editor

Three Simple Steps To Fix The Record Business in 2016… Windows, Windows, Windows…

windows

This time last year we correctly predicted the restructuring of at least one major label group when we asked the question, “Who will be the First Fired Label Execs over Spotify Fiasco & Cannibalization?“. It didn’t take long for us to find out, “It’s Just Math : Digital Music Execs Exit, But will the Pivot to Paid Subs Be Enough To Save The Record Biz?” We’re still not sure that even paid subscription streaming actually works in the long term, but we know for sure that unlimited free streaming does not!

What a difference a year makes. What a difference Taylor Swift makes. What a difference Adele makes.

Going into the next year our prediction is that the power of windows can not be overstated as the leading solution to the problems faced by the record industry. Effective windowing has always been a part of the economic life cycle of every album release. The physical singles sales business (ya’ll remember 45 prm records, right?) – well, that was largely a loss leader to boost singles chart positioning that combined retail and radio reports.

In every record store there was the “hit wall” of discounted new releases to encourage higher volume sales. Every store stocked a robust variety of titles across different genres and price points comprised of front line titles, mid-line titles, budget line titles, and at the end there was the cut-out bin. Also, let us not forget the “11 records for a penny” record clubs advertised in magazines.

Those, my friends, are windows. Those who are advocating against windows are probably too young to know better or have been lead around by the nose by some digital snake oil salesman protecting their own interests.

This is not a philosophical discussion. This is financial reality. Respected stock analyst Robert Tullo who is the Director Of Research at Albert Fried & Company says this:

Longer term IP Radio and Spotify are good annuity revenue streams and great promotional tools. However, we believe the system works better for everyone when artists have the right to distribute their Intellectual property how they see fit.

Ultimately we think windows for content will form around titles that look much like the Movie Windows and that will be great for investors and the industry as soon as all these so called experts get out of the way and spot trading fashionable digital dimes for real growth and earnings.

Mr. Tullo is correct. Not only will artist (and rights holders) do better when they have the freedom of choice but so will the partner platforms. This is how it works in the film business. Every month the “virtual inventory” on Netflix is rotated. New titles come in, old titles go out. If you really, really, really want to see something right now, you have to rent it or buy it via a transactional stream or download. The record business will benefit from the same models and strategies. Windowing works. Period.

See here’s the thing… If these new digital platforms are so great for artists, why wouldn’t artists want to participate on them?  The benefits would be self evident? If the product that Spotify, Pandora, YouTube (and others) are offering is so good for artists, why are these companies so afraid of artists and rights holders opting out? Maybe, just maybe these platforms are not offering the type of value that their suppliers find meaningful?

It really speaks volumes when a business model is so bad that one of  the essential features for survival of the company is to deny its suppliers the option to fairly negotiate their participation or have the ability to opt out. In the old neighborhoods that was known as a protection racket, or extortion.

Silicon Valley didn’t invent the freemium, they’re just doing it wrong. Really wrong. Horribly wrong.

Let those who want to give away their work freely do so, but also allow those who would rather opt out the ability to do so. If artists find value in the freemium tier, and they may well as they always have, then let them chose how to best utilize that option. Musicians pioneered the freemium model often using street teams to canvas concerts by giving away cassettes to fans of similar music.

If digital platforms allowed artists to use their technologies creatively, everyone might be pleasantly surprised how much better (and more profitable) things would work out.

Watching Pandora lose $5 billion in value in a year becomes a punch line when they believe they are better suited to dictate to artists how to best communicate with their own fans. It is indeed interesting to see Pandora admit what we’ve been saying for years, unlimited, ad-supported free streaming unsustainable. No Kidding. Here it is from Brian Andrews, CEO of Pandora:

“This gray market is unsustainable. If consumers can legally listen to free on-demand music permanently without converting to paying models, the value of music will continue to spiral downward to the benefit of no one.”

Of course what makes this comment most interesting is that Pandora is entering the crowded field of on demand streaming with it’s purchase of the failed Rdio. Pandora now has to compete with Spotify’s very large free tier of unpaid and entrenched users. Migrating those users to a new on-demand streaming platform will be a challenge (ask Apple and Tidal), and even more so as artists and labels grow tired of subsidizing these horribly flawed business models.

Here’s three uses of freemium streaming most artists (and rights holders) would probably embrace if given the choice.

1: The Hit Single

– Using the freemium platform to launch a single to gain ubiquitous awareness of a new album release. This is what both Taylor Swift and Adele did and the results speak for themselves. More artists would probably embrace releasing one or two songs or singles from an album on freemium tiers. With the artists support this becomes far more valuable than extorting the them into releasing their entire album on a platform they feel devalues their work.

BONUS: What if Adele made an official playlist of her favorite songs, leading with her new single? How much added value does an artist of this caliber bring to a platform when they feel they are being respected and valued? Answer, ALOT.

2: The Focus Track

– Not everyone has a hit single, but most artists have a focus track from their album. Like the hit single, these artists would embrace the opportunity to be discoverable and to build an audience of new fans. Developing artists are the most eager to try new opportunities because the have the most to gain. If digital streaming platforms worked with artists in a meaningful and respectful way, the mutual benefits could be huge for everyone.

3: Rotating Inventory Management

– By adopting a Netflix like inventory management of monthly rotating titles on the freemium (or even paid subscription) tier more artists might feel compelled to be more engaged. Rotating inventory management is a smart way to keep users and fans engaged as old titles rotate out and new ones in. This simple trick restores a great deal of the consumer engagement that is a part of discovery, and promotion.

Of course, the goal of every freemium model is to lead to more paid revenues in higher value products. Working together with artists and rights holders the future of streaming distribution could be very bright. But to get there we need to let go of Stockholm Syndrome. the old neighborhood protection rackets, bullying extortion threats and just plain bad business models.

There is a lot that can be done in the world of streaming. Streaming is not bad, it’s just a technology. Free streaming and subscription streaming both have their place in the ecosystem. What is bad are the exploitative business models, lack of transparency and devaluation of the artists work. These are fixable issues that have nothing to do with technology, just a lack of common and business sense.

by Trichordist Editor