Warner stops free music licensing

Warner Music has decided to stop licensing its music to free streaming services, stating that free music streaming is “not positive” for the music industry.

This will impact on many of the legal free music streaming services such as Spotify, which has seven million users over six European countries, and has been met with mixed opinion across the industry.

Warner Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman said,  "The ‘get all your music you want for free, and then maybe with a few bells and whistles we can move you to a premium price strategy’, is not the kind of approach to business that we will be supporting in the future." He suggested that the focus would be on promoting music streaming services that required subscription fees which could potentially be more beneficial to the music industry than paying for single downloads.

Spotify declined to comment on Warner’s move, making it unclear if the music label plans to withdraw their catalogue from the streaming service, or simply decline to draw up new licensing with other streaming services.

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