statements like this are exactly the reason why people have zero sympathy for the music (and movie) industries. In the real world, products are worth as much as people are willing to pay for them, not whatever the hell you want to charge. Spotify isn't cheating you out of anything. You are getting paid what the market has deemed your content is worth. If you don't like it, take your songs off spotify.
No, its not a price point that the market resolved.
Its not like a moving company that has a businesses with costs and then they compete with other identical businesses and test the customers and have a price discovery phase and then arrive at a price.
Spotify is a solution to the environment of widespread P2P/piracy.
The people were offered a price: $0 on Napster/Limewire/Oink. They accepted the offer. Great, the market has spoken; that's what the content is deemed to be worth. Its worthless. Its worthless because it is possible to obtain it without paying for it.
In any industry whatsoever if you offer a price of $0 then people will take it. Try offering beer for $0 — maybe you can support it with advertising ;)
The price point that Spotify is offering is in competion with piracy. That's why it is so low.
> If you don't like it, take your songs off spotify.
Why would I do that ? I love Spotify. There is no income in it for me as a rights holder, but there's no benefit for me to remove it. [I am far more likely to remove my music from iTunes actually. its just not a good look, there are better digital stores]
I think they have great intentions and want desperately to make this new economy work. They cannot just raise the price (they would love to) because they could kill the whole thing and sales would drop off. They are losing money in order to keep this thing going.
What I said was that its use for the user is to replace sales; but the payment and pricing (in and out) are like that of broadcast.
Its a very unfortunate disruption.
> Spotify isn't cheating you out of anything.
sigh. people are so binary when discussing this stuff. Its more complicated. It would be nice if people weren't so hostile and always trying to identify a bad guy to blame everything on.
^This a million times. I'm so sick of all the irrelevant arguments made by ALL the parties involved. There is only ONE product type that can hold an artificially high value for any extended period of time; a status symbol. By definition status symbols are impossible on any digital medium. THEREFORE, stay off the internet or follow economics. I will respect either choice. I will laugh at anyone that expects to get the benefit of both without the cost of the either.
