Spotify is financial death by a trillion streams

Back in March I wrote a brief piece on the streaming of recorded music, The lunatics are advising the asylum, in which I noted:

These models will do for artists that which the iTunes store (unbundling the album) did for recording companies: financial death. Ironically it will be great for rights holders.

I held the view well before writing that post that streaming will turn recorded music into a nickel and dime game, which will only work for multinational aggregated rights owners. I’m talking about companies that own millions of songs and recordings, and not thousands let alone hundreds.

Since March we’ve seen a number of labels leave the Spotify ecosystem, and with good reason. The latest is Projekt Records.

There is an alternative to streaming services. One that reflects how people actually want to consume digital media and not how some in Silicon Valley think they should. (I’ll include armchair critics like Lefsetz in this category too.)

The alternative? That’s one I hope to let you all know about in the New Year.