Streaming music gets a swift kick in the face

It seemed to me that music companies had the perfect deal, or at least a new and improved deal.  Finally they'd found a way to get around the rampart file-sharing that had cut a huge sized chunk out of their profits.  After years of suing their customers to recoup the losses from filesharing, there seemed to a light at the end of the tunnel.  Last.fm and others in the U.S. as well as the apparently awesome Spotify in the UK and Europe served as a way for consumers to get music outside of the deadly filesharing.


These sites were known to pay a great deal for the use of their songs and served as a alternate revenue stream for the music companies.  Personally I have been looking forward to U.S. launch of Spotify which is supposed to sometime this year.

All in all, things seemed to be at least going somewhat in the right direction, but of course, the music companies once again found a way to shoot themselves in the foot.  Earlier this week Warner Music decided that it would not allow any further streaming music contracts.  Now, I understand the fact that they sunk a ton of money into the recently defunct imeem.com, but come on hasn't the spotify contracts paid off in Europe?  Come on, give it up Warner, Americans are not suckers anymore than Europeans.  By blocking streaming music you have essentially blocked Spotify, which really can't launch without the Warner catalogue.  Once again, the music industry has managed to put itself n position that can only result in continuing loss of profits.  I sort of wonder how long its going to be before there is nothing left on my Last.FM playlist whatsoever.  I'd like to say that I think the music companies will come to their senses, but past evidence would suggest otherwise. 

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