On January 8 of this year, The Trichordist ran a story that the Huffington Post apparently rejected in which indie musician Blake Morgan describes a closed-door meeting between Spotify executives and a group of musicians. According to Morgan, he actually had to explain that Spotify’s “product” is not Spotify itself but music—music that Morgan and his friends make, and which ...
In July, two new lawsuits were filed against the streaming service Spotify, alleging willful copyright infringement on a “staggering scale.” Publisher Bluewater Music Services and songwriter, musician, and producer Robert Gaudio (formerly of The Four Seasons) both accuse the streaming service of infringing the reproduction and distribution rights of songwriters by failing to obtain mechanical licenses for several thousand songs ...
When Napster appeared in 1999, it was a bit of a perfect storm situation for fans to rationalize music piracy. Granted, people would have used the file-sharing app no matter what, but the music industry had indeed become demonstrably bloated; and one chronic complaint among consumers was that we were required to buy a $15 CD just to get two ...
According to Peter Kafka writing for re/code, the fact that Adele has broken all-time records with sales of her new album “25” while simultaneously rejecting streaming services is too much of an oddity to provide any guidance for music professionals vis-a-vis their business models. Kafka writes the following: “If you are looking for big lessons in Adele’s success selling more ...
Taylor Swift’s new album 1989 is the first and only to go platinum this year. And the year is just about over. At the same time, Swift is making headlines because her label Big Machine (a label she and her family own) has pulled all of her albums from Spotify and other streaming services. As David Lowery’s artists rights blog ...
