The dispute between streaming of music has become increasingly fierce and competitors are making strong strides to attract subscribers to their respective platforms. TIDAL and the Apple Music, for example, chose the strategy of having exclusive content for some artists. But how far is this kind of play good for artists and users?
O Spotify, considered the largest of streaming Today with 30 million subscribers (and a total of 100 million users, including those who do not pay), it began to have a great rivalry with Ma's service since the launch of Apple Music, just over a year ago. Already with half of the subscribers of Spotify (15 million), Apple Music has grown a lot and a lot of this is due to the exclusive agreements of several great artists. For this reason, a very peculiar news circulated on the internet.
According to some sources from Bloomberg, Spotify would be “punishing” artists who have an exclusive agreement with Apple Music or TIDAL, making them more difficult to find when searching for the service. Some claimed that this had been happening for a year and others said that this conduct was adopted only a few months ago. Spotify promptly spoke out, saying the allegations were "unmistakably false".
Despite the title, the largest streaming music is far from the most profitable. This is because, of the $ 2 billion he raises, 55% goes to record companies. Therefore, the numbers of Apple Music and the pocket of Apple are increasingly threatening, mainly because Spotify is in the period of renewing contracts with the various record labels around the world. In order for his status to remain, he needs to be able to negotiate longer-term terms in order to attract investors.
Even with the constant growth, Apple Music may face some problems along the way after the great Universal Music decided to suspend negotiations with the service. This happened because Frank Ocean chose to release his long awaited album “Blonde” exclusively on Ma's service from his own record label, leaving out Def Jam (from the Universal Music group), with whom he stayed for many years.
In the middle of all this war are users and artists. If a person is interested in artists who make new content available exclusively on different services, they have two options: subscribe to both and spend more or subscribe to only one and lose the content of the other. As it is much more likely that the second option will be chosen (the pocket always speaks louder), both users and artists end up losing, in a way. Unless some service ends up “winning” this dispute, it will still bring a lot of headache to those involved, including us.
(via 9to5Mac)
