[tunesmith]

That point gets brought up to imply artists are in the wrong, when it actually supports that Pandora/Spotify are in the wrong.

Pandora/Spotify are debt-financed. They literally cannot afford to offer their services at the royalty rates they are paying now, and are pressuring musicians to take less.

You can definitely create a service that is popular with consumers if you are debt-financed (see Napster 1.0). That doesn't mean that the service should exist, or that the songwriters should make financial sacrifices to make the service viable.

[dublinben]

If artists think that (immensely popular) streaming services are worthwhile, then they're going to have to accept lower royalties. These legal streaming services are responsible for as much as an 80 percent reduction in music piracy. If artists kill off these services, then they better be prepared to accept the rampant piracy of the 2000s.

http://www.digital-digest.com/news-63709-Music-Piracy-Down-b...

[k-mcgrady]

I'd be interested to see whether it works out better for the artists if they were to remove their music from streaming services but offer it free to download on their website one change for an email address. If they have to make money through merch and concerts then a direct line of communication to their fans might be better than the pittance they receive from streaming.

[kalleboo]

I'm just surprised Spotify hasn't done more to let artists create brands. I'm imagining something like Facebook pages, and you have a custom newsfeed on your home page that artists could post to including stuff like "new t-shirts are available" and advertising concert tours. It could be based on who you listen to the most/recently instead of explicitly following people.

Apple's Ping tried to do that stuff, but it was a massive failure due to other reasons (everyone hates the iTunes app).

[dublinben]

I think artists need to consider streaming as advertising. It's a good way for your music to be discovered by users looking for new music. If you remove your music from Spotify et. al. then you'll be missing out on new listeners.

With fewer and fewer people downloading music these days, I'm not sure how valuable free downloads even are as promotion any more.