Dive Brief:
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When Apple relaunches its Beats music streaming service as iTunes, it’s not expected to have a free version, Quartz reports.
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Spotify is the on-demand streaming service with a fairly hefty catalogue on its ad-funded free version; Rdio has a free version but is more limited. Taylor Swift’s move in November to remove her work from Spotify because, she says, it shouldn't be free, is widely seen as influencing the current market, according to Quartz.
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Meanwhile, Google’s YouTube, with a billion users compared to Spotify’s 60 million, is working on a streaming service of its own. At the moment, users can listen and watch music—including Taylor Swift’s—for free.
Dive Insight:
This could be good news not just for artists, for whom Taylor Swift has said she speaks, but also, just possibly, brick-and-mortar retailers. If ad-supported streaming goes away as an option for users, everyone’s going to have to start paying something, and that changes everything from marketing to merchandising.
If it’s true that Apple won’t support a free version of streaming iTunes, it’s the latest in some other high-profile moves against the concept. Universal Music Group chief Lucian Grainge, for one, has changed his mind. If more artists and labels demand more money or pull their work as Swift has, Spotify itself may have to rethink its options.
“Ad-funded on-demand is not going to sustain the entire ecosystem of the creators as well as the investors,” Grainge told Re/Code.
