It was fascinating to follow the evolving Spotify story yesterday, after the company announced its new restrictions on free usage at 9am. Initial stories portrayed Spotify as the villain, while pointing to angry users promising to go back to piracy. Yet as more media outlets piled on, attention quickly focused on two aspects: the role of labels, and the likely implications for the US market. Here’s the Telegraph’s music biz source: “The labels are getting tired of waiting for more people to start paying for Spotify, so several executives have put pressure on the company to scale back the free offering imminently”. And here’s the Guardian: “Spotify is cutting the amount of free music people can listen to in order to please the American labels with which it is agonisingly negotiating to try to get permission to launch in the US”. GigaOM chose to hail ‘the end for ad-supported music’, while Forrester’s Mark Mulligan warned that “The consumer demand dial cannot be turned back. Illegal downloading and YouTube forever changed many consumers’ perceptions of music as a paid-for commodity. These consumers expect music to be free”.
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