Spotify is finally gearing up to go public, and the company’s February 28th filing with the SEC offers a detailed look at its finances. More than a decade after Spotify’s launch in 2006, the world’s leading music streaming service is still struggling to turn a profit, reporting a net loss of nearly $1.5 billion last year. Meanwhile, the company has some weird lawsuits hanging over its head, the most eye-popping being the $1.6 billion lawsuit filed by Wixen Publishing, a music publishing company that includes the likes of Tom Petty, The Doors, and Rage Against the Machine.
So, what happened here? Did Spotify really fail to pay artists to the tune of a billion dollars all the while losing money? Is digital streaming just a black hole that sucks up money and spits it out into the cold vacuum of space?
The answer involves something called “player pianos“. You can’t make this stuff up.
Have you seriously never heard of a player piano?
That’s why the words ‘Mechanical Music’ appear in licenses. That stops you creating new player piano cards from new tunes without a license.
I know someone who got hit with a copyright violation from a music company for creating such a new player card deck. He had almost the last laugh in that it was his own composition but… (there is always one) the Mechanical Music licensees came back at him for a license to create the cards.
From memory, the last player piano was made circa 1940 yet the music is still bedevilled by copyright and licenses. A lot of that is thanks to a certain rodent and a former maker of cartoons.
As for spotify, they seem to be operating on the premise that if they can get away with paying $0.00 per play of music then they will.
The size of their pending lawsuits might even put a stop to the IPO. IMHO, they need to get their house in order before going on with the IPO or I for one will carry on thinking that the current Spotify board are only in it to profit from the IPO and as soon as the money is in their offshore bank accounts, they’ll be off to pastures new.
Thom, i’m disappointed in you, given your country had the world greatest self-playing instrument museum in the world. I suggest you go visit it: https://www.museumspeelklok.nl/lang/en/
There’ also a band called Wintergatan, who are dutch, and he build crazy automated mechanical instruments, such as the marble machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q
Cool! What a nice place! Hope I’ll have time to visit it next time I travel to Europe.
Thanks for sharing.
It’s a Swedish band. Vintergatan (“The Winter Road”) is the Swedish name for The Milky Way. The Marble Machine was inspired by some of the self-playing instruments at the Museum Speelklok though.
Oh, right. I thought they were dutch. My bad.
Edit: wopsi, dont think i had reloaded for a while or something, posted pretty much same as someone else, sorry!
Edited 2018-03-17 01:11 UTC
Conlon Nancarrow – Studies for Player Piano
Of all the legal problems they might have faced, that is not the one I’d have thought would get them. I’d have thought it was their massive data breaches. Oh, they deny them, but my account was one of those leaked in some of those datasets and the credentials were valid at the time. Given that they don’t offer 2FA nor any other security feature, coupled with their massive irresponsibility, I’d have thought this would be the trouble they faced. Needless to say, I ditched them in favor of a competitor and they’d be wise to make darn sure they do something about that situation before they proceed.