The New Napster? Or Musicians Thinking They Can Do It On Their Own?

About eight years ago I got locked up in a conversation with Pat Monahan of the group Train; me being in radio and him carrying the weight of what makes radio attractive, you'd think our separate performances would be opposite sides of the tracks. That's what made the Green Room dialogue real. In 2004 Monahan understood the importance of both mediums. Although the Ipod and MP3 players were still babies and Napster fighting with Metallica had lost press. Radio hadn't truly crossed over to fully broadcasting on the internet. We had web pages blessed with podcasts and Best of Morning Show bits...but to go all out Pandora taking on I Heart Radio was nothing more than a pup tent at 6am. In every place I travel I'm shocked to meet listeners that are strong in their beliefs that great songs magically appear in the speakers of their car. I wish I could say Radio DJ's pop out a CD and play whatever they want. Those days were killed in the sudden darkness created by the Alan Freed, Dick Clark Payola scandal of the 1950's. Rather than cheat on listeners with an interview based on the same thoughts and processes easily read in every magazine, my conversation with Pat Monahan generated openness with a well scouted out purpose. Neither side of the playing field was going to walk away feeling their sport was better than. It was an agreement based on music sharing. Shove the current calendar toward this present day and 2012 could walk away the most dynamically reshaped mechanism found in probable continuation of music business sickness. People write and perform music everyday! And people need to get paid! Everybody including the receptionist taking calls at the studio where the tracks were laid. Have you enjoyed the music services of modern waves? Pandora, I Heart and Spotify have linked more fans of music back to the instruments that first introduced it. I'll never forget standing in my daughters kitchen where her famous stepmother discovered I Heart and couldn't believe pieces assumed lost forever were being reintroduced to the masses. I stood proud of Clear Channels push toward a new frontier. What many assumed was a peace train is about to crisscross lanes RollingStone Magazine reports Taylor Swift's Red may soon be the year's biggest-selling album, but it isn't on Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio or any of the other music-streaming services – and that's not surprising. Late last year, Scott Borchetta, founder of Swift's label Big Machine Records, suggested he'd approach Spotify like Netflix, airing movies weeks after they come out. "We're not putting the brand-new releases on Spotify," he told Rolling Stone at the time. "Why shouldn't we learn from the movie business? They have theatrical releases, cable releases. There are certain tiers. If we just throw out everything we have, we're done." Offering a streaming version of Swift's album for free via Spotify or Xbox Music, Borchetta argued, would cannibalize sales. However, Sachin Doshi, Spotify's head of development and analysis, points to Mumford & Sons' Babel as an example of the contrary: the album streamed eight million times in its first week, then sold 600,000 copies. "That goes to prove streaming services do not take away from unit sales and, in fact, can be additive for major artist releases," he tells Rolling Stone. "That's our point and we're sticking to it." Just as top artists such as the Beatles once held out from iTunes, Spotify, the free streaming service that launched in July 2011 in the United States, has to figure out how to grow without Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Metallica and AC/DC. In addition to Swift, the Black Keys and Adele are among the stars who've withheld new albums until weeks after their release dates. Other holdouts, including Bob Dylan, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Arcade Fire, caved in recent months after meetings with Spotify reps. "It wasn't a negotiation, it was more of a 'guys, here's what's happening,' and really showing them Spotify is beneficial," Doshi says. "They start to get it once they see the numbers." Spotify, which has 15 million users worldwide and four million paid subscribers, is part of a wave of services that have threatened to transform the record industry's business model from selling individual albums to streaming songs on demand. YouTube is by far the biggest such streaming service, although it makes money purely from advertising, not subscriptions – and most music, including Swift's Red, is available there for free. Record executives aren't worried about the holes in the catalogs of Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio or the others. "For years iTunes didn't have Madonna or Dave Matthews or the Beatles and did fine," says Alex Luke, executive vice president of A&R for the Capitol Label Group. "I would argue that the [streaming] space is still finding itself and the jury's still out on how big these services are going to get and whether or not a missing artist or a missing catalog will make a huge amount of difference. It didn't in the case of iTunes."