News - Artists can now sell commission- free merchandise on Spotify

[HEXUS]

The service is being offered in a bid to ease criticism over poor royalty pay outs.

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[Barakka]

Spotify is worried, they are losing money because they have 3 times more free subscribers than paid subscribers but still have to pay the royalties to the labels/artists when tracks are streamed whether to a paid or free subscriber. They have driven down the price a bit because of this, but that has meant losing artists who don't want their music given out for $0.006 a time. So offering commission free merchandise sales is a way to attract the artists back in/keep the current ones.

Plus Beats Music is getting ready to launch as Dr.Dre gets ready to enter the music streaming business in a big way launching a service similar to Spotify but without the free subscription option. It's all in partnership with some big players from AT&T (mobile network), record producers, studio engineers, and high profile artists (Trent Reznor is CCO). It's a bold move, but hopefully will have the power to get the recording industry to sit up and take notice of what needs to happen to copyright laws to get streaming working properly for labels, artists and consumers while being able to operate as a profitable business.