Streamer Services Shoot At Each Other - Musicians Are the Casualties

[Mandolin Picker]

"An escalating battle between Apple Inc. and Spotify Ltd. is leaving some musicians caught in the crossfire. Spotify has been retaliating against musicians who introduce new material exclusively on rival Apple Music by making their songs harder to find, according to people familiar with the strategy. Artists who have given Apple exclusive access to new music have been told they won’t be able to get their tracks on featured playlists once the songs become available on Spotify, said the people, who declined to be identified discussing the steps. Those artists have also found their songs buried in the search rankings of Spotify, the world’s largest music-streaming service, the people said. Spotify said it doesn’t alter search rankings."

 

Read the entire article over at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-26/spotify-said-to-retaliate-against-artists-with-apple-exclusives

 

[MikeRivers]

Suppose Tower Records refused to stock a record because Waxie Maxie's was selling it. I guess the concept of record distributors has gone totally out the window now that everyone is his own distributor (as well as record company, artist, and recording engineer).

[Anderton]

The thread title says it all...good choice of words there.

 

This will only get worse as time goes on because there is no separation between the "record company" and the "distributor." Formerly artists had to be exclusive with record companies, but they didn't have to be exclusive with distributors. The landscape has changed...