It didn’t take that long even; Spotify announced today that they will have some ‘important changes‘ done to their music catalogue. Some music will no longer be available in certain countries (a form of GRM – geographical rights management). This proves (yet again) that having a centralized system based upon the good will of the current copyright regime, like Spotify is based to do, have some major disadvantages. We already knew this of course but we hoped that Spotify could persuade the record companies to open up a bit. Instead they’re doing the thing they usually do; chicken out at the last minute in order to believe they have some sort of control.
This move only hurts fans willing to actually live in the controlled realm of the record companies, instead of making the fans have access to the music they want to listen to.
Another question – when will it be possible for unsigned artists to upload their music to Spotify? And will there ever be something shown to the public on the distribution of the money that spotify might earn, to the artists versus the copyright holders? These are questions that we need an answer to in order to evaluate the potential in services like Spotify that claim to be a just system for everybody involved. It just goes to show – without an open infrastructure and, for that matter, an open discussion, there will be unanswered questions that will make it impossible to move further.
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Some new small Swedish independent record labels, like Imperial Recordings, have recently been added. Others are Starboy Recordings and Licking Fingers. I’m sure there will be plenty of small labels and eventually even unreleased artists added.
[...] En nyhet i dag, via Peter Sunde: Spotify stympar katalogen av [...]
As far as I understand, unsigned artists can indeed ask to be put on Spotify. With my former band Vox Vulgaris we released one album on our own, and it somehow turned out on Spotify (yes, they used illegaly acquired music, because we never had any proper legal license telling them they could use it, however as kopimists we of course like being copied). Then they took such grey zone material away, but when asking them, they told me that if we just gave proper permission, they would put it back. That would probably, in formal terms, include a permission from the “record company”, but that would in this case be synonymous with the band.
I wrote about this in Swedish here:
http://copyriot.se/2008/11/12/spotify-i-upphovsrattliga-grazoner/
That record companies have any rights at all in radio or in streaming is just bizarre.
nu väntar vi bara på facebook gruppen som samlar namninsamling emot detta…
Hi Peter,
In regards to your questions about unsigned artists getting onto Spotify I suggest that if someone is interested they contact our content team.
https://www.spotify.com/en/work-with-us/labels-and-artists/
We hope to make a system that would allow smaller artists to easily get onto Spotify and our Content team can help with that.
[...] man nog anta att det den här gången kommer att bli rätt kännbara nedskärningar i musikutbudet. Peter Sunde kommenterar också, inte [...]
[...] Skivbolagen börjar dra i tåtarna och använda sina möjligheter att förstöra Spotify. Brokep skriver bra om det. Låt oss notera att verkligheten är tvärtemot retoriken: att skivbolagen [...]
[...] Brokep writes about Spotify and that they’re doing some important changes to the Spotify music catalogue. [...]
Omdömet hos skivbolagsbossarna har sedan länge korrumperats av deras girighet.
Den som gapar över mycket, mister ofta allt.
Andres: I did that for about 2 mouth ago, never got at single response back.
[...] stora snackis i mitt bloggflöde har varit Spotifys planer på att ta bort låtar och införa GRM (man hade kunnat hoppas på att kommissionens blatanta ministerstyre fått större rubriker, men [...]
I think it funny they say that some “artists” don’t want to be on Spotify and they remove Frank Zappa according to a comment on the blogposting.
Isn’t he dead?
[...] que o tempo veio a dar-me razão pois ontem fiquei a saber através do Peter Sunde AKA Brokep do Pirate Bay que a Spotify anunciou no seu blog oficial que iria remover uma série de [...]
[...] om hur digitalt “innehåll” ska levereras till “kund” enligt någon form av Geographical Rights Management-logik. Detta påminner om regionkodningen av DVD-skivor… men kom igen… vem vill att [...]
[...] är speciellt intressanta*. Men de som gör det har det väl inte jätteroligt just nu eftersom det verkar som om det kommer att karvas en del i den tillgängliga musiken. Nå’n snubbe som heter Staffan Malmgren skriver ett intressant inlägg apropå detta: [...]
[...] orimligt att anta att EU är tillräckligt korrupt för att hitta en lösning). Vidare så skapar Geographic Rights Management ("landsgränskontroll") ytterligare [...]
[...] Expected event [...]