Are These Related?

Farhad Manjoo at Slate is pretty enamored with Spotify, a streaming music service in the UK. He ties it to the slowing numbers on file-sharing across the pond:

But there is one legitimate reason to suspect that Brits have changed their thieving ways. In the last few months, they've had access to the best music-streaming service in the world. It's called Spotify. And if you had it on your computer, you'd probably quit BitTorrent, too.

Not stealing music because you've got a better legitimate option for free is one thing, but I find it interesting that the music business is actually growing in the UK as well. And if you click through to the Guardian article, license fees from Spotify are part of the growth.

What's also important is that they seem to consider the entirety of the "music business" -- including touring and sponsorships -- and not just the making of records, which is what constantly trips things up over here. But the overarching point is the same, in that better access to music can create more engagement with music consumers. It may even reinforce that you can't separate recording music from playing live, but that notion is starting to pick up steam in some of the new partnership deals happening at the top levels of the business, and may be trickling down to smaller artists as well.

I do find interesting about that, in the Slate piece, Manjoo is pretty dismissive of Rhapsody. Now, to his point, Spotify is free and Rhapsody isn't, but just now I saw that Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs cover "I've Seen All Good People" from Yes on their album that just came out today, and because I subscribe for $12.99 a month, I'm listening to it right now. So Rhapsody doesn't suck, and if there's an ad-supported streaming service to be had in the States, it's probably going to come from that lineage.