Streaming still dominates how fans consume music. While physical copies are making a comeback (especially vinyl), the ability to listen to your favorite songs, albums, and artists anywhere you like is simply too good. The ethics around are still in question though as musicians aren't benefitting as much as they could be. That's partially why you see a lot urging their fans to support them directly via their own websites, so they earn more for their hard work. While DSPs are sort of villainous and aren't going anywhere anytime soon, it seems Spotify is looking to change artists' view on how much they can benefit from utilizing their platform to release music.
That's at least one way as to how Spotify is pitching this new agreement they have just struck with UMG. In a recent press release (via Uproxx), the industry titans said this multi-year deal (how many is unknown) is centered around "growth, innovation, and the advancement of artists’ and songwriters’ success." This is how they are branding their vision of what they are calling "Steaming 2.0." Sir Lucian Grainge (CEO of UMG) and Daniel Ek (CEO of Spotify) are going to be presenting worthwhile changes for artists and consumers in the form of "new and evolving offers, new paid subscription tiers, bundling of music and non-music content, and a richer audio and visual content catalog."
Spotify & UMG Have Big Things In Store
This is all a part of this potential "Super-Premium Tier" that UMG and Spotify are working on. You can see in the breakdown above what this could look like for users who decide they want to fork out some extra money a month to have the very best experience. Future incentives include, "early access to new music, priority access to deluxe editions, hi-res audio, listening party invites, and artist Q&A sessions." If this does come to fruition, Spotify and UMG are expecting to have a higher retention rate.
Sir Lucian Grainge of UMG is very much looking forward to this extended partnership. "This is precisely the kind of partnership development we envisioned." Mr. Ek of Spotify added, "This partnership ensures we can continue to deliver on this promise by embracing the certainty that constant innovation is key to making paid music subscriptions even more attractive to a broader audience of fans around the world."
