Recent Thought.
I’ve been a regular Grooveshark user for a long time now and were happy to hear about their deal with EMI this AM. That said - I’m a believer that people will not pay for music discovery and music streaming. Maybe it’s just me, but I think once this went free it went free for good.
Grooveshark is going to try and convert a piece of their user base to paying customers, but I’m not sure it will be enough. From a business model standpoint, I think labels need to focus on pushing the per-stream cost down to help companies like Grooveshark, IMEEM, Pandora, etc exist and flourish. There are other ways for a label to make money in this equation. Otherwise, everyone (Spotify included - don’t think for a minute that labels don’t see their warchest of cash) will have severe difficulty building a business that can be profitable. Right now, the economics simply do not make sense (ad revenue vs per stream cost) and success is severely hindered as a result.
