Before Apple Music and Tidal came along, Spotify was the king of music streaming. In fact if we are to look at the numbers, Spotify is still leading the way, although Apple is not making it easy for them thanks to their deep pockets, industry connections, and the exclusives that they have been landing.
In fact Apple Music has been such a thorn in Spotify’s side that it has also affected how they are negotiating deals with the major record labels. According to a report by Music Business Worldwide, Apple be the reason why, and so much so that apparently Spotify has not been able to lockdown any long-term contracts with the labels and has been going at it on a month-to-month basis.
One of the reasons why is money, naturally. Apple is said to be paying 58% of its revenue to the labels once the free trials are up, and apparently these are the figures that the labels want Spotify to pay, or at least get closer to that figure compared to what they are paying now. Spotify on the other hand actually wants to lower that amount ahead of their IPO so that they can be profitable, not to mention they don’t exactly have the same spending power as Apple does.
That being said, the report claims that in spite of these disagreements, the negotiations between Spotify and the labels remain optimistic and it is highly unlikely that the labels will pull their catalogues from Spotify’s library. In fact it has been suggested that the most likely outcome will be pretty much the same deal Spotify had struck before.
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