The introduction of online streaming services like Spotify and Pandora have brought about unprecedented legal access to music, eliminating at least some of the need to illegally acquire content owned by music labels and musicians.
Now, that access is under attack by Apple, who is pushing for the end of on-demand ad-supported music.
The news comes in the wake of numerous reports that claim Apple has been prodding major music labels such as Sony and Universal Music Group to pull content from free on-demand music platforms.
If this were to happen, music listeners around the world would lose an enormous amount of access to free music that is currently made available through paid advertisements.
It’s not like Apple is alone in this push since there’s no shortage of discontent from major labels against ad-supported music streaming, but it’s incredibly suspect given Apple’s recent music streaming push with the $3 billion acquisition of Beats.
The act of pulling support for Spotify’s free services could also be heavily detrimental to music label revenues as well. Spotify claims that a streamed song on its platform will generate $0.006 to $0.0084, all of which goes toward artists/labels, the higher number attainable for the most popular artists.
If you take Ke$ha’s “Die Young”, which has currently amassed 96,742,802 plays, and multiply those plays by the maximum pay-out amount, there’s a $812,639 paycheck that never makes it to Ke$ha’s music label.
