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The old ways are going away.

Where is the relevance of the label system now that producers can master and release tracks directly digital with no pressing time at all? Gucci Mane is great example of a hugely popular artist who released track after track as fast as he could grind them out, for years (decades now! go count how many mixtapes the guy has made). This is the new normal, hyper creativity and high speed production. Pop cylces are like 100x as fast. You're telling me some old white dudes in suits can A&R faster than teenagers can hashtag and invent there way into new genres and music with their laptops. Yeah right. Dinosaurs.

It was dead with Mp3s and the internet and it's just still gasping along like all the old media giants. Smaller and smaller labels are able to survive these days, finding more and more niche audiences. Music has gotten more diverse in the last 17 years and you can tell. Genres launch and burn out in months now, or develop a cult fan base and continue on for years (ICP still tours this is like my perfect example of trash that still has fans).

I'm not saying Spotify is the king but people using "the labels" as a threat, come on, we all know what disruption means. Bandcamp and Soundcloud and even Youtube have runaround the label system.

The one thing I'll grant you is that maybe subscription fees aren't enough to keep the infrastructure going. This is possible. But the big pile of data is certainly worth something now and in the future, and the ability to scoop trends might be the sword that tames whats left of the big labels monopoly.

[matwood]

Labels control the back catalogs, other than that I agree with you that the old ways are changing. The problem is nothing you said gives Spotify some unique advantage over Apple on the streaming side or something like cdbaby on the publishing side. Spotify can't just be some 'small' label and survive, and I'm also not sure what artist only wants to be on Spotify.

Music streaming has been completely commoditized. It's an add on feature to both major phone software makers. What can Spotify uniquely bring to the table that will give it the money to survive?