Streaming music service provider Spotify AG may be about to back down on one of its founding principles, that all users of the service should have access to the same catalog of music, due to pressure by filthy rich, greedy musicians.

The Wall Street Journal claims that Spotify has held private talks with music executives where it has indicated that it is considering allowing some artists to start releasing albums only to its 20 million-plus subscribers who pay $10 a month, while withholding that same music (be it temporarily or permanently) from the company’s remaining ~60 million users accessing the service through its free ad-supported tier.

Spotify is initially said to be willing to try the new approach as a test where among other things it will investigate how such a “windowed” approach might affect usage and subscription sign-ups.

The report also notes that the company hasn’t decided which artist will get to withhold music from the free service first and that Spotify isn’t ready to announce a permanent policy change as yet.

Any move by Spotify to restrict new releases to paying customers only would come as a result of the service, despite being the most popular streaming service on the planet, missing out on new release albums from the likes of Taylor Swift, Adele, Coldplay and others as the musicians have boycotted any streaming music service that offers a free, ad-supported listening tier.

Spotify for its part hasn’t denied that it has been in talks but instead said it was committed to offering a free tier.

“We are 100 percent committed to our model because we believe that a free, ad-supported tier combined with a more robust premium tier is the best way to deliver music to fans, create value for artists and songwriters, and grow the industry. In that context, we explored a wide range of promotional options for the new Coldplay album and ultimately decided, together with management, that Coldplay and its fans would best be served with the full album on both free and premium this Friday.”

Greed

What’s often ignored (intentionally or otherwise) by musicians and music industry executives is that so-called “free” streaming services aren’t actually free in a classical sense as they come served with ads; users agree to listen to advertising in return for the ability to listen to music, and those revenues are actually returned to musicians; sure, the amount returned is not a high one but its more than radio and more significantly, pirated music, where the artist doesn’t see a cent in return for those who listen to their songs.

Free ad-supported music services (such as offered by Spotify) primarily cater to those who would not have paid for music to begin with and have been widely successful in dramatically reducing the level of music piracy; the music industry seems to think that taking away access to free ad-supported music streaming services will result in more people signing up to paid streaming services and, therefore, increase their revenues but in reality what will actually happen is that many of those who previously pirated music but have switched to streaming (and let’s face it, that’s a majority of users) will simply return to pirating music again.

It was the greed of the music industry that drove people to pirating music to begin with and it will be that very same greed that will see people returning to doing so if free ad-supported music streaming sites lose their appeal by being starved of new releases.

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