[hemloc_io]

Here's a question I've had and maybe someone from HN can answer it.

The (movie) streaming wars have content as a differentiator in the market, but it doesn't seem like Spotify/Apple music is effected.

Assuming both the RIAA and MPAA members both don't care about consumer complaints that much, why do record companies not start their own streaming services?

I assume it's easier than making a movie streaming service, and it's basically the same business model right?

Why aren't we reading these headlines about Top Dawg vs Spotify instead of Disney vs Netflix.

[version_five]

The streaming services only work if they are "better" than just downloading the content for free. My guess is that music has a much lower barrier, both in terms of availability and in people's tolerance to listen only to parts of a catalogue divided along record company lines, so if only 25% your top 40 (or 90s or whatever) was available on SONY Streaming, you'd just say fuck it and download it.

Somehow, the video landscape has shaken out to have generalist (Netflix,maybe Amazon) and specialty content, not all that different from cable. So people are used to it that way. And come to think of it, radio generally plays music from all record companies, so there is a precedent there too.

With more fragmentation, particularly with Netflix losing it's generalist position and having more self-produced crap, I suspect that downloading movies is going to become viable for more people

[adgjlsfhk1]

I think a lot of the reason is length. With movies you get disappointed once per 2 hours of content if you don't find what you searched for. With songs, it's 10-20 times per hour.

[kmeisthax]

They tried. They failed so horribly that the RIAA basically granted Apple a monopoly on digital music for the next half a decade. Steve Jobs had to basically slap the labels around a lot just so that they wouldn't limit how many iPods you could sync your music to or make you buy a subscription. Music streaming was tried by basically every other player in the business and failed until Spotify pushed for ad-supported free streams.

Interestingly enough, the record labels - or at least Sony and Universal - actually do have minority ownership in Spotify. I would not be surprised if that was specifically pushed to get those labels on-board with Spotify's really low royalty rates.

As for why they don't do it today... my guess is that the exclusive content model just isn't as much of a draw for music as it is for movies and TV shows. Or, more specifically, we don't listen to music like we watch TV shows. Imagine if someone just made a list of episodes of Netflix shows they liked and watched them in a random order - that'd be insane. But that's how we handle music all the time. Pulling your music off Spotify means you lose out on radio and playlist royalties, because nobody can make playlists across streaming apps. You'd have to switch into the one streaming service that has the latest Taylor Swift album, then switch back to the one that has the Sony BMG catalog, and so on. Nobody would do this.

[Wyoming23]

Your guess is close to correct but with some critical differences regarding the power dynamics and incentives between Spotify and record labels.

The record labels pulled off the ultimate coup right when technology was making them irrelevant. Ethically, they should have negotiated for a larger revenue sharing with the artists, and then taken their percentage from that. But they realized they could make far more money by forcing Spotify to give them equity in exchange for screwing over the artists.

The end result is that the record labels simultaneously were negotiating supposedly on behalf of the creators against the streaming platforms, while simultaneously becoming owners of the streaming platforms. They agreed to terrible terms for the artists, in exchange for making themselves the beneficiaries of the crooked deal.

[remir]

Music is consumed differently than TV/movies.

People these days usually don't listen to entire albums, but to individual songs as part of playlists. If all record labels created their own streaming services, it would break this experience and people would go back to piracy again to get it back.

Further, music is something that usually exist in the background while people do other things, whereas movies/shows requires attention to benefit from the content.

Service like Netflix or Disney+ can manage to create exclusivities because people watch episodes of a show in sequence due to the nature of the medium and are emotionaly engaged/invested in the story/characters, so they are essentially "captive" of that serialized content for its duration.

[ThatPlayer]

I think the difference is how music is consumed. When was the last time you just sat down and listened to music? The same way you would with a book or a stream? For me, music is just something I put on in the background rather than something I'm devoting my full attention to. This makes one song very interchangeable with another song

And that makes it harder to get convince someone to subscribe to your service because quality is not important for background noise. Even a unique song gets old after listening to it more than a few times on loop. That leaves quantity as your sole selling point, which if it is only your catalog is not much.

Maybe they could make an organized effort with other record companies to pull out of Spotify/Apple Music/YouTube Music all at the same time. But any of the smaller companies wouldn't be interested in that because it would make it harder for them to compete because they have a smaller catalog and less money to spend on the tech.

[johannes1234321]

It is an interesting topic why those markets are separate. My assumption is that music is way more casual and affiliation to labels and distributors is a lot smaller than with video. Some big stars aside there is lots of interchangeability ... that song not available, well then I listen to something else, but if a Star Trek movie isn't there I won't watch Star Wars. But that's speculation.

As a consumer I very much prefer the Spotify/Apple Music model. I don't want to have 20 subscriptions. I want to go into Blockbuster or some other video retailer and get any movie and pick what I want. I don't want to think about studios and distributors and rely on external services to even figure out what to use (in Germany: https://werstreamt.es which tells me where I can watch/download)

[colinmhayes]

I don't think people would use a music streaming service that doesn't have all the content they want. I think the record companies agreed to the streaming deal because they saw that piracy was a legitimate issue, and the business strategy probably just worked better than for film. $5 or $10 a month per user adds up to an acceptable amount of revenue for music labels + streaming services to split, but there's just more money in film so the price for a universal streamer would be bonkers and no one would pay.

The content probably works better for film streamers too. If you have to change apps every time you finish a 3 minute song to listen to the next one you probably would look for a different solution, but film is a much longer commitment so switching services after watching is less of a hassle.

[parpfish]

I think this the main reason -- it really just comes down to the number of unique pieces of content a user will stream in a session.

For video a session is generally one movie or a bunch of episodes of the same TV show, so you can sit in one service for a long time.

But for music, you'd either spend lot of time hopping between services OR you are forced into making compromises (e.g., do you listen to the classic rock radio station on the service that has rights to rolling stones, or the app that has rights to led zeppelin)?

[lmm]

People mostly aren't willing to pay for music exclusives. (Tidal tried to make a go of it, but that hasn't really gone well for them). People are willing to sign up for Amazon just to watch The Grand Tour or whatever, but there's no real analogue to that in the music world. Maybe because a single album or even a single artist is too "small" to make an impact?

Compare the fact that people used to pay for (individual!) cable TV channels, but there was no equivalent for radio - a few people did pay for satellite radio, but I don't think you ever got people signing up for the premium package in the same way they did on TV.

[MBCook]

History?

So this is a total guess but as far as I know radio stations have always played all music. As far as I know there’s never been Sony stations and EMI stations and such. Maybe with original programming like soaps and game shows long ago or talk shows more recently but never music.

On the other hand TV sort of started siloed. Maybe because of radio consolidation? But CBS had CBS stuff, NBC had NBC, etc. Cable kind of continued that (outside of syndication and reruns).

I just can’t imagine listening to a BMG station. I don’t have any clue what label(s) my favorite artists are on.

[systemicdanna]

Most people can’t name a single label/recording company. Or if they can they don’t care about its music catalog enough to pay a monthly fee.

[ketzo]

You can't launch a new service without exclusives. Exclusives are much less effective in music than they are in TV/movies.

1) There's so much more producer variety in music than in video, even at the top of the charts.

2) Music listening habits are very conducive to variety. In the time I watch a single Marvel movie, I could have listened to songs from 10+ different record labels.

[xmprt]

The music industry was losing out on tons of money until Spotify and music streaming services came up. Unlike movies, I think people like to have all their music in one place so if they cut Spotify out of the middle then instead of people moving over to subscribe to them, people would just stop listening to their music or go back to piracy.

[ErikVandeWater]

Best guess is that the business model in music has moved to live performance. It's important for stars to get their music heard by the most people so that they can have the greatest demand for concert tickets.

There's no parallel in movies. But it would be interesting to see the actors of star wars in a play that tries to recreate the movie.