There have been some major changes announced recently with the integration of music with facebook. With the recent launch of spotify in the USA I am particularly interested in the merger between it and facebook.
It was reported this week that spotify account holders are now required to have a facebook account. This seems like an odd requirement and one that could backfire with some people not wishing to use facebook at all. This seems to be a cross promotional arrangement and is likely to improve integration with the two services with one login password able to activate both.
Recent changes to facebook include the live reporting of user activity and the ability to share music with friends through facebook. Interestingly enough spotify users will be able to restrict the reporting of their listening habits through the settings in spotify - there has been no indication that such reporting restrictions are possible through the new facebook interface. Nor has there been reports that other music services to be integrated with facebook will have the same ability to restrict the sharing of listening activity. Indeed it has been reported that facebook are using cookies to track users activities even after they have logged out of the service.
There have been some negative developments for Spotify however with three independent labels withdrawing their catalogues from the service citing a lack of financial viability as the reason. Spotify suggest that this was an error on the labels part and were quick to point out that copyright holders are not paid for each time the music is streamed but rather are paid for allowing access to the music. This does seem counterproductive for labels that are most likely to need the exposure to new audiences to create momentum for independent artists. Two million paying subscribers are a large potential audience and this could be the case of shooting oneself in the foot.
Having said that, recent reports suggest that independent acts do make very little out of spotify. European band Uniform Motion suggest they get 0.003 EUR/play. If you listen to the album all the way through, they get 0.029 EUR. If you listen to the album 10 times on Spotify, they get 0.29 EUR. If you listen to it a hundred times, they get 2.94 EUR and if you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!)they get 29.47 EUR! This does seem like a hard way to make money and at a fraction of the rate of downloads from iTunes for example.
Further Reading
Digital Music News, It Gets Worse: Spotify Now Requiring New Users to Have Facebook Accounts... (27 September 2011) < http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/092611marriage > at 3 October 2011
TechDirt, Labels Dropping Out Of Spotify Are Totally Missing The Point (23 September 2011) < http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110922/11224716052/labels-dropping-out-spotify-are-totally-missing-point.shtml > at 26 September 2011
Digital Music News, The Facebook Effect: It's Time to Rethink How Music Works... (23 September 2011) < http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/092211facebookmusic > at 26 September 2011
Digital Music News, Facebook's Extreme Makeover: It's Happening, Already... (22 September 2011) < http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/092111facebook > at 26 September 2011
Digital Music News, Spotify Now Surpassing 2 Million Paying Subscribers... (22 September 2011) < http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/092111spotify > at 26 September 2011
Digital Music News, Then, This: Another Indie Pulls Out of Spotify... (20 September 2011) <http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/091911spotify > at 26 September 2011
Digital Music News, Spotify Defends Its Payout Structure... (20 September 2011) <http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/091911spotifydefends > at 26 September 2011
TechDirt, How Much Does A Band Make From Various Music Platforms? (12 September 2011) < http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20110911/00284415891/how-much-does-band-make-various-music-platforms.shtml > at 19 September 2011
Digital Music News, What an Artist Really Gets Paid, Continued... (14 September 2011) <http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/091311artistmakes > at 19 September 2011
Digital Music News, Facebook Admits to Tracking Logged-Out Users... (28 September 2011) < http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/092711facebook > at 3 October 2011
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