Followups: Free money from YouTube, windowing and piracy, totally not Pono.

I noted previously how the record industry demands money from YouTube that they know literally doesn’t exist. The new phrase is “closing the value gap” (translation: your job is to come up with a business model that gives us free money), and here’s some bogus comparisons that may be stupider than Lowery comparing Camper van Beethoven’s airplay royalties to John Peel’s salary, sorry, streaming income to a Spotify employee’s salary.
Spotify has also done a windowing deal with Merlin, which covers a huge chunk of the larger non-major labels. This remains a stupid idea that will directly encourage piracy — survey says: millennials will pirate if something’s not readily available. (Survey PDF.) As was blitheringly obvious to everyone who doesn’t run a large record company. Convenience wins, every time.
Pono collapsed when its back-end provider was bought and shut down by Apple. Neil Young wants to start another high-fidelity streaming service. Hopefully without the Pono player — someone A/B-tested the Pono against an iPhone and the listeners thought the iPhone sounded better more of the time.