http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8507885.stm

Quote :

"Record label Warner Music has said it will stop licensing its songs to free music streaming services. Companies like Spotify, We7 and Last.fm give free, legal and instant access to millions of songs, funded by adverts. Warner, one of the four major labels, whose artists include REM and Michael Buble, said such services were "clearly not positive for the industry". ... "The 'get all your music you want for free, and then maybe with a few bells and whistles we can move you to a premium price' strategy is not the kind of approach to business that we will be supporting in the future." "

/facepalm

Yes Warner...making it harder and more annoying for your potential customers to listen to or preview your product is certainly going to make them more willing to buy it!

As someone whose music is indirectly licensed by Warner this sucks (Our label is licensed/distributed through EastWest which is a child company of Warner Music). I'm not sure the full implications of this at the current time, but for a band like us, the fact that people can stream our stuff off of Myspace, Last.FM, purevolume, etc. is the sole reason we can get our music out across the country or world. We all have real jobs now and don't have the opportunity to tour non-stop to promote our music. Instead, we promote heavy online, providing people free streams of our albums. This has directly resulted in lots of people buying CDs in states (and countries) we have never played a show in. Without that capability, those sales never happen.

[Edited on February 10, 2010 at 3:51 PM. Reason : ]

2/10/2010 3:49:23 PM

I don't know why people don't wise up and STOP purchasing music from these retarded labels...Its not like you'll be missing out on anything anyway.

2/10/2010 3:50:32 PM

Subscription media is the future. They'll figure that out eventually.

2/10/2010 3:50:51 PM

^^ In a response to both of your statements/questions my initial post was coming from the artist side. Warner Music is a pretty big network that has partial or full licensing rights to lots of smaller labels (like the one we are on) it supports in some way. These small artists especially RELY on these kinds of sites as a huge portion of their ability to get their music heard by people.

Heck, I don't even care if people steal our records online. The people that steal them in other countries wouldn't have even heard about us without free streaming sites.

Now, I don't know 100% that this trickles down all the way or even if it is retroactive, but I do know in the past we got contacted by them to take a song down off of myspace that we were offering as a free download because they had the licensing rights to it. At that time we were told we could continue to stream for free but they told us to stop the free download.

^you don't mean subscribing as in the customer doesn't actually own any of the music, rather only streams it from one database do you? that doesn't appeal to me at all. But yes, Warner was talking about moving towards subscription only for streaming instead of free

[Edited on February 10, 2010 at 4:04 PM. Reason : ]

2/10/2010 3:54:15 PM

does this include pandora and slacker?

2/10/2010 4:44:41 PM

If you get caught downloading music

Warn a brother

2/10/2010 4:46:40 PM

^^ not sure, the initial info isn't very clear. From the description of the types of sites they were targeting, those seem to fit the mold though.

2/10/2010 4:48:20 PM

heh. All the music i've bought over the past 6 or so years has been from hearing new stuff on pandora.

2/10/2010 5:01:13 PM

2/10/2010 5:12:00 PM

Quote :

"whose artists include REM and Michael Buble"

Who dat?

2/10/2010 6:22:48 PM

Hope this don't fuck up my paid Slacker.

2/10/2010 9:33:07 PM

Yeah, I got this message on youtube the other day:

Quote :

"This video contains content from WMG, who has decided to block it in your country."

(/)_-)

2/10/2010 11:29:28 PM