From recode.net:

The big labels provide Spotify with the music that makes up 87 percent of the company’s streams. Spotify provides the labels with billions in revenue, which is starting to replace the vanishing money the labels used to make from CD sales and digital downloads.*

But Spotify’s plans for the future do involve changing that relationship in the long run.

The idea, according to people familiar with the company’s plans, isn’t to cut out the big music labels, or compete directly with them by signing acts to recording deals.

Spotify does imagine, however, that over time, a growing tier of music acts, or small independent labels, won’t use the big labels for distribution. Instead they’ll work directly with the streaming service.

(Let's take a second to note that that last sentence really does say, "Compete directly with them by signing acts to recording streaming deals." Though obviously what they're trying to avoid is what recode mentions further down... "If Spotify goes after our big acts, we’ll go nuclear. Good luck running a streaming service without our songs — not just the new ones, but our old catalog, which accounts for the majority of our streams." And there's the anachronism that explains why we have striated music services today.)

I'm waaaay late to the bandcamp party, but I finally mainlined it a bit a few weeks ago. It's not knock-down, drag-out great music, but there's a lot to discover in there. The search interface is exceptionally limiting, for some reason, not allowing complete freedom to pick from what's a pretty nice set of music types, but once you invest some time, you'll pull out a few good bands, seemingly whatever your preference.

And if Spotify could be the music recommendation service I wish Apple Music was, it'd be on to something.

This really is a Reese's Cup commercial. All the parts are out there, and working well. More important than bandcamp is what it represents: indie music has the tools to release high-quality music to the web with hundreds of dollars worth of gear. No longer do they need radio and labels. And there are services that do a good job with music discovery.

Somebody just needs to get that last barrier to entry -- having "all the musics" on the same competent discovery service -- out of the way so that they can move on to Step 3. Profit.

Labels: Apple Music, bandcamp, business, music, spolsky, spotify