If an artist is on the same label for worldwide, then it’s easy for the label to easily grant spotify worldwide use of the song. It;’s only really one decision, made centrally by a huge label.

However many artists choose different labels in different territories.

The reason? Many labels just don’t have the resources to operate in more than one country. A small indie in the USA clearly can’t afford to release an album all over the world.
The result is that an artist would choose who they most wanted to go with in each individual country. Traditionally this would be a GOOD thing. Instead of having a massive cooperation releasing your music, you have many small teams of people who care about you and your music in different places.
However, for spotify, how can they contact all these various small labels and get access straight away for the music?
Clearly they can’t – it will take time.

Lets not get too anti music industry here, as the people you’re probably most annoyed at are the small labels – the passionate indies. Such as WARP, K records, Kill rock stars, dischord, and many many more.

Spotify should really have explained this more clearly. It feels a bit like trying to create anti music propoganda in order to get headlines and people saying ‘you are the future’.
But in reality, it’s the locaslised independant music groups who are causing them the problems, mainly because it takes spotify such a long time to contact them / deal with their catalogues. And undoubtedly, these are not the catalogues that are the most profitable to release for them. A small DIY punk band from new jersey is not going to generate as much streaming as michael jackson unfortunately.

Every time you think record labels are finally, possibly, just maybe beginning to ‘get it’, you see a bit of news like this (from techcrunch) – “Record labels pressure Spotify to restrict service”… oh for f***’s sake, here we go……

If you look at any of the major tv network streaming sites, they check IP addresses for territory. As an example, I was unable to use Hulu while in Spain recently, and I can’t watch shows from the BBC in the US.

The problem gets complicated by the number of moving parts involved. Music publishers and the various territories they control get very convoluted (dozens and dozens of country groups and publishers per song). Unless you can get a world-wide license, the economics don’t make much sense.

You will find the tech heads at these labels are arrogant and just plain dense. They are all subservient to Apple and iTunes. Not 1 single label has made an attempt to come up with their own idea for a service or technology, but will attempt to steal others.

I am working on a technology right this second to end piracy for audio and video. I have determined I am tired of trying to get these label snobs to see the light and will only cater this new technology to video uses.

I no longer care about music and I think other technology holders will start to feel the same.

When you can’t get the entire Beatles catalogue on your service but the thing is on Bittorrent for years, quit placing your hard work in startups in music, you are wasting your time and in comparison with limewire and bittorrent, no one really cares anymore.

I told a friend of mine to BUY a popular artist’s discography from a record store, as it was “WORTH IT”, he told me yesterday that he could not find any record stores where he could buy the 3 albums so he simply found the whole thing in 1 rar bittorrent online for free.

Stop wasting your time on music startups..