Free music downloads: Why nothing good ever comes for free

Digital music service, Spotify went into battle against iTunes earlier this week when it announced a new download service.

Its basic download price is higher than iTunes but the more tracks you buy the cheaper it gets. For example, in the UK a bundle of 10 tracks will cost £7.99 but 100 tracks will cost £50, a saving of £29.99.

It also announced that its mobile app will be available to non-subscribers to listen to music they have bought. But will people’s attitudes towards online music ever change? And does anyone bother to pay when they can just stream for free?

But, music streaming services are too expensive and are at risk of pricing people out of paying to listen, according to research for New Media Age.

The report, by Lightspeed Research, revealed that while 21% of respondents have used music subscription services like Spotify, Last.fm and We7, only 3% paid for their premium services.

Up until last month, when Spotify reduced the number of free listening ours for non-paying subscribers from 20 to ten, I did not pay for the service. In the past I’ve had a subscription to other services, including We7, but in my opinion Spotify has a better choice of music and I also enjoy the social element of shared playlists.

Last month I decided to pay for Spotify after it reduced the free listening hours but my decsion was spurred on because of an opinion piece by Verity Burns on the MSN website.

Some users are angry that they will now have to pay for a service (if they want to listen for more than 10 hours a month) that they used to be able to access for free.

But I agree with her that paying £10 a month, the equivalent of buying one album, for access to thousands of tracks, is worth it. Sure you don’t actually own any of the music, but for me Spotify is a cost effective way of accessing all the tracks I want.

One topic that Verity didn’t touch on is the massive financial losses to artists, record labels and music companies who are suffering because of falling sales and illegal downloading.

Spotify was hailed as the record industry saviour, paying royalty fees to distribtion companies and finally producing a financially viable platform for the music industry. However, it’s not that simple.

According to a widely shared infographic, a track on Spotify needs to be played over 4million times in a month before an artist will earn the minimum US wage. Of course, Spotify pays record companies royalties but in order to do this and to keep growing as a music player it needs to increase the number of paying customers. I for one am happy to support this.

Interesingly it seems that artists do not have to give permission for their music to appear on Spotify. Stuart Murdoch the lead singer of Scottish indie folk band, Belle & Sebastian, recently blogged about the issue after an outburst on Twitter. He said: ‘Overnight, this thing appeared called Spotify, claiming it was a great idea, innovative, the saviour of the industry. From what I can gather, and no one has been able to tell me differently, it’s financed by a gathering of the top (ie. richest) people, from the top (ie. richest) record labels.’

‘Overnight, the whole Belle And Sebastian back catalogue became available to stream, for anybody, for free, for good. We weren’t asked about it.’

The whole debacle is a double edged sword – if fans continue to download illegally or listen to music for free then record companies will lose even more money and will be more likely to churn out manufactured cheap pop music rather than invest new bands.

In my opinion, UK independent music will suffer as it often takes time and money to nurture and develop. It will become even more difficult for artists to become successful and profitable.

If fans of music do not want this to happen then they need to pay their way and realise that nothing good ever comes for free.

Tara Evans, Journalist, This is Money

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