Yes, i don't think the original content strategy will work out for streaming sites the way it has for netflix and amazon. I'm not willing to open one app to listen to one album and then another app to listen to a different album. I'll use the service that has all the music i want to listen to. Whether that's piracy or youtube playlists or spotify. If any streaming service starts getting too many exclusives, it's going to just kill the entire streaming market.

From my perspective, all the streaming services should be working together to create a healthy marketplace for independent music, and providing every opportunity they can for musicians to avoid signing a big-four contract. If Warner and Sony, and UMG get their act together and create a joint venture streaming service that's the exclusive host of the content they own, Spotify, Google Music, and Apple Music are screwed.

You argument works in favor of Spotify too.

If they sign on 100 top artistes, it will devalue the portfolio of music held by the top 3 - for reasons you explained. Thus, the top 3 are incentivized to collaborate with Spotify.

> They do own half the physical radio stations in the country which is still how people find new music, you know.

IME, lots of people find new music by genre/mood/etc. curated or “like this song/artist” algorithmic stations in streaming services, not terrestrial radio.

ClearChannel front; they own all major terrestrial radio in the US

Soundcloud exists, but is likely on life support[1].

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14990911

They fired a fair number of developers in San Francisco, Berlin, shut offices etc - but are still running the servers AFAIK.

The problem with that is it creates a war for exclusives. If their competitors start doing the same thing, spotify will just end up losing a lot of their content.

and personally, unless spotify continues to have the vast majority of the music i want to listen to, i won't continue being a subscriber.

"In 1978, Apple Records filed suit against Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) for trademark infringement. The suit was settled in 1981 with the payment of $80,000 to Apple Corps. As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed to stay out of the music business. A dispute subsequently arose in 1989 when Apple Corps sued, alleging that Apple Computer's machines' ability to play back MIDI music was a violation of the 1981 settlement agreement. In 1991 another settlement, of around $26.5 million, was reached.[54][55] In September 2003, Apple Computer was again sued by Apple Corps, this time for introducing the iTunes Music Store and the iPod, which Apple Corps asserted was a violation of Apple's agreement not to distribute music. The trial opened on 29 March 2006 in the UK,[56] and in a judgement issued on 8 May 2006, Apple Corps lost the case."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps#Apple_Corps_v._App...

Apple does directly sign non-label artists to exclusive deals with Apple Music, but so far that's mostly established artists, they haven't put money into discovering and developing artists.