Online music streaming services have always well… been screwed… to be blunt. Music services such as Project Playlist can be shut down with a lawsuit or shut out with a few lines of code effectively shutting out their target market. Not to mention if services are paying per stream it is near impossible to cover the bills with no fee to the user. Music streaming services are the equivalent of a rabbit sticking up to a huge pack of hungry wolves, it just can’t happen. Even music services that allow you to download music with heavy restrictions and not pay constant royalty fees are folding, the latest being Spiral Frog.
Imeem and Last.fm probably the best to weather the storm are suffering also. Imeem has just recently laid off six people out of 70 and there are heavy talks about being in severe debt. Each stream on Imeem costs .01 cents to the labels, which seems rather insignificant but you must keep in mind the internet is very viral. Let’s put this into perspective. If we take the top song in each of the 15 genres and estimate that they each have one million streams (a very low estimate Akon – Right Now is at 3 million plus streams) and do the math it comes out to be ten thousand dollars each song, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars just for the top songs in each genre. This is using a low estimate of the top songs. If we apply this to all the top songs in each category you can see how quickly the money starts disappearing and how quickly Imeem could be having issues with the current economic state. Advertisements just can’t cut it anymore.
Last.fm on the other hand has a bit more of a backbone when CBS bought them out. But even with them footing the bill restrictions are now being put in place. Users outside of the states, UK or Germany must foot a bill of 4.40 a month to stream and for all users the last.fm API cannot be used for mobile devices unless special permission is granted. Even if the majority of international users do decide to pay for streaming this just seems to be put in place to merely break even in tough economic times.
Is It Time We Start Seeing Reality?
Many of us expect music to be free, but is this just a fantasy that we need to stop dreaming about? Maybe it is time we pull our head out of the sand and realize that we need to start paying. I am not saying that we should revert back to old schemes and models but rather compromise with the labels and invent new ones. Obviously paying out right and free are just not working. It’s time we realize that the labels are businesses also and people do expect a paycheck.
Will we have to pay for our legal music? What do you think?
