Music industry and piracy
Has the solution finally been Spotted?
It is undeniable that the music industry has been going through a handful of changes in the last years, from the vinyl discs to the boom caused by the CDs, followed by its downfall caused by piracy and the possibility to buy single songs instead of whole albums online, among other reasons. However, there’s a trend that’s been growing quite a lot in the last couple of years, the music streaming, led by a company named Spotify.
Spotify holds a fairly large user base, with over 24 million active users, of which more than a quarter are paying subscribers. Along with its competitors (and there’s a lot of them), they have been changing the way people listen to music, as well as bringing more revenue for the artists themselves, as they take end users away from piracy; “My goal is to get 1 billion [people] using streaming services rather than a piracy service.”, said Daniel Ek, cofounder and CEO of the aforementioned streaming company.
Although it’s hard to predict the future of music streaming services like Spotify (and of the music industry as we know it), it’s interesting to watch this attempt of the industry to maintain itself. Besides that, it’s a good example of what Gabe Newell, cofounder of the video games company Valve, stated: “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”. It’s good for the industry, and even better for us, end users.
