PAY THE PIPER: Aftershock Records owner Phil Williams believes there will always be a place in people’s hearts for the CD. Photo: JUDE KEOGH 052spot2
A NEW streaming music service is offering listeners the opportunity to listen to songs for free.
The only catch is that you have to listen to advertising between songs.
Spotify gives music lovers access to millions of songs and is now available in Australia.
However, musicians have expressed concern about the returns offered by the service.
For every click the artist receives $0.0053.
Aftershock Records owner Phil Williams says something is better than nothing.
“At least with this service it is better than nothing, because if people wanted to stream music they could just go straight to You Tube, which is free,” he said.
“Artists deserve as much [money] as they can get but in this case the customer is not getting anything they can physically own.”
Mr Williams said downloading of music, whether it be illegal or legal, will push people to buy the CD.
“People still want to have the physical product, to own the physical product,” he said.
“Quite often I get people in here [Aftershock Records] saying I’ve downloaded these songs and I really like them so I want to buy the album.”
Orange musician Ray Vanderby said he would support free music streaming services as long as some payment went to the artist.
“Obviously it would be good if they received more than that [$0.0053] but at least they are doing the right thing by the songwriter,” he said.
There is a version of Spotify that costs $11.99 per month and is ad free.