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anentropic

> I don't limit myself to the music of one band, so i really appreciate spotify

this is a bizarre analogy

no one had to limit themselves to listening to only one band before Spotify

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No one had to limit themselves to one news source before either, but that's what publishers are trying to do now.

No... but I assume even in the pre-digital days most people only ever had one, at most two, newspaper subscriptions. And the newspaper (er, news website) publishers are still living in that world.

But you also had the option to go out and buy the day's newspaper yourself. Maybe I don't want a subscription, but you can't buy a "day pass" online for like $2 either. Sure that's about half a weekly subscription to the NYTimes, but I don't have to commit (and have to remember to cancel) a subscription.

There is literally no publisher that would be able or trying to prevent you from reading other publishers. What they want is for you to come back to them, but you can read others too.

Publishers know you have a limited budget you’re willing to spend on news articles. If you spend it all with through the purchase of a bundle, you’re less likely to spend it on other publishers.

Record companies and artist were initially also fighting single track purchasing, trying to keep customers to buy albums, fearing the loss of revenue if customers could buy only what they liked, without all the low value fillers.

And they were right to fear it, as spotify revenue streams hardly resemble the revenue streams they had from selling albums.

Selling through spotify is now seen as marketing, bands have to make their money from concerts.

Newspapers and magazines are correct to fear selling per article, it will significantly reduce their revenue, with no real revenue model to make up for it. Newspaper concerts?

Back in the days of buying albums, comparable to the newsstand days, was certainly a lot more expensive to listen to multiple albums. There was the radio, but you weren't in control of that. You could make mix tapes, in the 90s. But you might have more of a tendency to prefer sticking to one band since you couldn't preview their albums before buying, other than getting lucky hearing a tune in the radio.

Seems like a good analogy to me.

And then there were small record stores like HEAR (bay area?) or Wall of Sound (Seattle) where you could listen to as much of as many albums (CDs) as you wanted to before buying.

Minor clarification: mix tapes were not condoned by the recording industry, they were actively opposed.

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