14 DAY TRIAL // The music streaming service is reportedly pressured by big record labels such as Universal to take action regarding its free music distribution, as it is apparently damaging to the music industry, in general.
Although the company is offering both types of services, free and premium, the latter providing users better streaming in terms of quality, adverts-free music and the possibility to access the application when offline, it would seem that the Universal chief executive Lucian Grainge is not very pleased overall.
He seems to be trying to determine Spotify to make some changes regarding its free music distribution process in order for the royalties paid to musicians to increase, or at least this is what can be deduced from his declaration for The Independent, "Ad-funded on-demand is not going to sustain the entire ecosystem of the creators as well as the investors."
It's not the first time that Spotify is having this type of issues
Other conflicts regarding this issue have emerged some time before, when the renowned songstress and composer Taylor Swift decided to have all of her songs removed from the app, stating that “I will not dedicate my life's work to an experiment.”
The reason Spotify is so reluctant to make changes regarding its free music distribution is because they are afraid that if they start putting fees on all of their services, then people will simply choose to stop using the application and they would prefer to download the music from pirated sites.
They do have a point there, no one would like to all of a sudden start paying for the same services they had been receiving free of charge up to that point.
It remains to be seen whether Spotify will implement any kind of changes following this backlash from the music company, given the fact that they are perfectly aware this will affect them directly.
Any monetary changes or any restrictions are prone to come at the cost of losing a large number of people who will refuse to pay more for the services provided by Spotify.