They have opportunities to leverage their massive footprint by vertically integrating. They could begin to acquire talent and exclusively release their music and prioritize it in their algorithms or forge agreements with existing labels that create this sort of arrangement. They would then have leverage to negotiate better deals with 3rd party rights holders.
In essence a type of payola since they have a lot of sway in picking winners and losers. They sort of tried this with podcasts but I’m not sure those move needles like music can.
So yeah their current model may be limited but they have a lot to work with.
They are certainly doing that. But that is only a solution to the select few who are chosen to be vertically integrated with!
They have also vertically integrated in the opposite direction: by making deals with large media corporations, and also by implementing DRM (to appease those media corporations).
So at this point, there isn't much vertical integration left to be had. Any more deals with individual artists (or labels) would really just be horizontal integration.
> So yeah their current model may be limited but they have a lot to work with.
That limit is practically the entire worldwide music industry. They are very close to that limit, and seem utterly ignorant about it.
In essence a type of payola since they have a lot of sway in picking winners and losers. They sort of tried this with podcasts but I’m not sure those move needles like music can.
So yeah their current model may be limited but they have a lot to work with.