[danielsoneg]

Yeah, but nobody listens to 15M tracks. They listen to a small subset of those tracks, and that subset differs from person to person.

Heck, for fun, let's say you were to listen to music 8 hours a day every day for a month (~30 days) -

  8hrs * 30 days = 240hrs
  (240hrs * 60min/hr) / 3min/song = 4800 songs.

Basically, you're paying $5-10 for a maximum of 4800 songs - or, between $.001 and $.002 per track, if you listen constantly.

Or, from the other side: Spotify's premium is $10/mo, which comes with no ads. They pay $.003 out to each band - let's just pretend they follow Amazon's 'agency' policy of a 70/30 split, so Spotify's making roughly $.001 on each song, and it's costing them $.004 total for that song (hypothetical - just stick with me). If we assume they're not losing money, then an average $10/mo user must listen to at most 2500 songs per month, and if Spotify's costs are higher than $.001 per track, the number goes down.

Point is, the industry's providing _ACCESS_ to 15M tracks, but they're only having to deliver ~2500/mo - but that's a different bundle of 2500 songs for each user. It MAY make sense from their end just to call it 'unlimited' and rely on the fact that the user can't consume music fast enough to really upset the economics for them.

(Incidentally, if you were to decide to listen to each of those 15M songs once, you'd wind up paying:

  15,000,000 Songs * 3min/song = 45,000,000 min
  45,000,000 min = 750000 hrs = 31250 days ~= 1027 months
  1027 months * 10/mo = $10,270

The record labels, then, value their entire collection of music at $10,270 - if you only listen once!)

[earbitscom]

I think the access to 15M tracks for free, $5, or $10, makes them seem pretty worthless. That's my issue.

[iand]

So having access to 5 billion web pages for a few dollars a month makes them seem equally worthless?

Not sure this is any different to being able to listen to any radio station in the country for free. I don't think that devalues music.

[earbitscom]

I am not sure how I feel about the first. On the second, it's very different. You don't get to pick what you want to hear, when you want to hear it. So, you discover something new on the radio, if you want it, you go buy it. You don't just sit and wait for it to come on again. With Spotify, you hear something you like, you have no reason at all to support the artist with a purchase, and you'd have to listen a ton of times for them to make any money.

[seabee]

That is per person, of course. Multiply by Spotify's million subscribers and you get $10bn of music. Not too shabby.

[earbitscom]

That math is very inaccurate. Most of their users don't pay, and none of them listens to every track once.