anybody know what the situation is regarding rights on streaming services such as spotify ?...as they are clearly the future of music...why are shelia e's paisley park albums on spotify and not other paisley park albums like jill jones ?.....and if prince does have the rights now to his early albums like for you...why are they still available ?....i cant see prince allowing spotify to have his albums if he has the final say on it ?...wonder if anyone knows how this works...i love using the streaming services and i hope that prince doesnt pull all his music off but i fear the worst...

I'm not exactly sure, but I would imagine it's treated more like a radio station than a purchase/download site like iTunes or Amazon. Each play must somehow benefit Prince and/or WB.

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If there was a "purchase" dynamic, odds are those albums would not be there.

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I agree though, Spotify is the direction that music is going. Everyone is so mobile, and music is less album-oriented, it makes sense. The fact that there's a free version makes it that much more attractive. So what if there are commercials . . . there are commercials on the radio.

Spotify explains how it remunerates rights holders on its site (see section 3 onwards): http://www.spotify.com/uk...m-spotify/

Se7en said:

I'm not exactly sure, but I would imagine it's treated more like a radio station than a purchase/download site like iTunes or Amazon. Each play must somehow benefit Prince and/or WB.

.

If there was a "purchase" dynamic, odds are those albums would not be there.

.

I agree though, Spotify is the direction that music is going. Everyone is so mobile, and music is less album-oriented, it makes sense. The fact that there's a free version makes it that much more attractive. So what if there are commercials . . . there are commercials on the radio.

haha i LOVE this site when somebody asks a question and although people dont know they will still answer!!

seems that most people are in the dark regarding streaming services..

The Time is on there, too. But I would love to other Paisley Park stuff & sum Vanity 6/Apollonia 6

jonylawson said:

Well to continue speculating, for Major labels i've noticed spotify/deezer/rdio tend to have whatever of their catalog has remained in print on CD over the years. So The Time/Sheila E will be there but not the Family or Apollonia 6. So either this is a rights thing going back a long time or it's simply a matter of them loading whatever they have digitally on their system. I think you'd need to see a concentrated and conscious effort to re-release these records before they'll appear on streaming. Most of the limited edition re-releases by the likes of André Cymone are not there either which fits in with the idea that the small record companies like BBR only got temporary rights to re-release the music.

Similarly with Prince It's not too hard to figure out that Come (for example) is there but the Gold Experience onwards isnt. Most, if not all, of the stuff that was digitally made available on itunes by a major (like, say, digital single re-releases of kiss/raspberry beret) are all there as well but stuff specifically released by Prince like F.U.N.K isn't. It's interesting to see the singles from 3121 are on there but the album isn't, clearly there was some other rights aspect to whatever deal he struck?

[Edited 7/2/13 10:23am]