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Deal with Spotify

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Spotify first appeared in the United States twelve months ago. A small Swedish import with a ‘freemium’ music streaming model and an interesting group of backers (including ex-Napsterer Sean Parker), Spotify was a highly anticipated new product. Indeed Spotify raised money last week from Goldman Sachs at a cool $3bn valuation – almost as much as the financier Len Blavatnik recently paid for Warner Music Group, the 54 year old label of Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, P-Diddy, and Jason Mraz.

And yet, there are many left unsatisfied. Artists such as Lady Gaga complain about the pitiful $160 she received from 1 million plays of ‘Poker Face’ on Spotify. Consumers complain about the $10 per month price tag to get Spotify on their smartphone. Labels haven’t said much. Yet.

The truth is that Spotify is a good revenue generator for labels – indeed many reports suggest Spotify is second only to iTunes in terms of revenue generation, yet at what cost? The Beatles, AC/DC and, more recently, Coldplay have all held content off Spotify, presumably because of the age-old industry fear: cannibalization (especially of traditional iTunes download sales).

The history of the music industry has been typified by a fear of cannibalizing existing sales: vinyl cannibalizing live; CDs cannibalizing vinyl; downloads cannibalizing CDs. Is this simply another case of fear holding back labels and artists from embracing a new model that’s inevitable? As Steve Jobs famously said, “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will”.

Maybe some numbers will help throw some light on these issues. Growth in industry download revenues was 16% in Sweden, Spotify’s biggest market, with ~50% of the population using the service, from 2010-2011. Download growth in Germany (where Spotify hadn’t launched) was 29%, one of the fastest growing in Europe. If Spotify is depressing download sales, then

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