Letters: Music to my ears – if I want it
[Re: Competition watchdog shines spotlight on music streaming, Jan 28]
Leah Montebello wrote last week that the UK competition watchdog will “look at the roles played by record labels and streaming platforms” and decide if the market leaders hold excessive power.
Music streaming has been around in some form for decades and even before the days of Spotify or Apple Music, there has been a few top brands with the power to curate people’s music taste.
Of course, this curation is now based on technology, but what isn’t? Surely we can’t be surprised that the big streamers hold too much power. But holding power is a necessary evil in a capitalist system. We do still have choice, however. We can choose not to listen to the suggested songs by Spotify. We can choose to download music to our phone instead. In fact, there was a report recently about people getting rid of smart phones in lieu of old-school phones with keypad and snake.
This is choice. Apple is a market giant in the telecoms world and Spotify is a market giant in the streaming world but we still have choice.
This is not to say we should not measure it, but the tendency to immediately cry foul because the power has changed hands to another small cluster of people must be quelled.
I liked listening to Neil Young and detest Joe Rogan but Young made the decision to take his music off of Spotify. I may make the choice to seek him out elsewhere, I might not.
Henry Dent