"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -Hunter S. Thompson
Spotify cards Photo: (Flickr user Andrew Mager CC BY-SA 2.0)
In the music streaming business, popularity comes at a cost. Every time a track gets played someone is meant to pay a label or artist. So the more users, the bigger the royalty payments.
This could be one of the reasons that Spotify is looking to raise US$1 billion in extra cash in preparation for listing on the stock exchange and becoming a publicly owned company. Douglas MacMillan is a technology reporter for the Wall Street Journal covering the story.
Meanwhile, SoundCloud has just announced a paid subscription service called Go as it tries to turn more of its user base of some 175 million users listening to over 100 million tracks into paid subscribers. John Paul Titlow of Fast Company has been at the launch of SoundCloud Go this week.
Soundcloud logo in Lego Photo: (Flickr user eldeem CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
