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RE: Digital music streaming hits major snag as over 200 labels sign off

DannyO_0x98 Updated - 19th Nov

@William Farrell
That's life. We are now or will be typewriter repair people. Copyright laws enable some degree of leverage for media. Still, if one looks at the laws and publishing agreements, one sees reference to mechanical reproduction because player piano rolls were the "recordings" of interest originally. When times change, they change.

Oh, the music industry loves streaming. It's pay per performance/listen. That's the dream, man, people hear, someone pays, and only the content owner keeps the track.

I guess it's STHolding's problem that not enough people are requesting their tracks for streaming. Pulling from a streaming service won't really address that. Another of STHolding's problem is that revenues from other income sources are not sufficient.

Music Business Rule 1: you can't sell what people haven't heard (unless it's by a musician people have heard of, in which case it sells better when people have heard the music).

Streaming is like radio, except the radio station doesn't pay you and the streaming service will make some effort to connect the audience with related but new music, i.e., a new sales opportunity. If Universal pulled its tracks from radio because the (non-existent) revenues* didn't replace lost track sales, you would say the looney bin is bordered by Lankershim. (Well, maybe not you, but they're over the hill from me.)

Here's my guess what's going on. STHoldings is doing this as part of negotiations for a higher licensing fee, or some other streaming service will pay STHoldings for exclusivity rights.

Or they are crazy.

*Promotional costs in legal and not-so-legal forms actually make getting songs on the radio a material expense which record companies pay and still they don't get all their tracks played. This may be changing. The internet may have disrupted payola.