Spotify: Live revenues, or the kitten gets it • The Register

• Spotify: Live revenues, or the kitten gets it • The Register

  tags: business models, copyright

  • Spotify founder Daniel Ek says the service can't keep giving away free music, and wants cheaper music and a cut of concert revenue to keep it going.

    Writing on the company's first anniversary of delivering a streaming music service, Ek repeated his desire to capture new revenue from people who might otherwise use unlicensed file sharing.

    

    But he said the music business needed to drop pay-per-play royalties and instead think about "a mix between ad-supported music, downloads, subscriptions, merchandising and ticketing where the user comes first and where the key to monetisation comes from portability and packaging access rights".

In other words, some form of revenue stream is required. How does Apple/Itunes manage doing this successfully? Can music ever be given away free? Yes but as part of a purchase deal (ie laptop, mobile phone)
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