It’s a truth universally acknowledged that nothing good can last. Especially when that “good” thing comes at a significant cost to many, many stakeholders. Naturally, we’re talking about free music streaming.

Many readers will remember the mild controversy that erupted last year after Taylor Swift pulled all of her music off of Spotify in the lead-up to the release of her latest album.

The cull was seemingly a case of Swift walking the talk in the wake of a much-discussed op-ed that the pop sensation had published in the Wall Street Journal, which addressed the current state of the music industry.

“It’s my opinion that music should not be free,” the singer wrote. While many claimed that Swift simply failed to grasp the concept of ‘supply and demand’, it seems the music industry is siding with Swift, big time.

If you didn’t hear about the ‘Swift incident’, then you may have heard chatter about how Apple is poised to revolutionise the music industry once again. Well, barring anything unforeseen, they almost certainly are.

The tech giant is set to make a huge push into streaming in the coming months with the relaunch of Beats, which it bought for $3 billion last year.

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With 800 million credit cards on file and a healthy bank balance, if even a fraction of Apple’s customers convert to subscribers, Beats will instantly become the biggest player in streaming.

But when we say that Apple will change the industry, we mean the whole industry. You see, with Apple’s decision to eschew a free tier on their new service, record labels are beginning to rethink the whole “freemium” thing.

“Ad-funded on-demand is not going to sustain the entire ecosystem of the creators as well as the investors,” Universal Music Group head honcho Lucian Grainge recently told Re/Code.

As Quartz notes, Grange’s comments come amid an exodus of senior executives thought to be in favour of a free, ad-supported streaming model from the label.

Naturally, this is going to pose a problem for streaming giant Spotify when it comes time to renew their licensing deals with labels. “Put it this way, Spotify’s free service will look very different a year from now,” one music industry source tells Quartz.

Meanwhile, Billboard reports that labels are pushing for listening caps to be imposed on free users. It seems Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s insistence that freemium provides a stepping stone to paid subscription is falling on deaf ears.

As Spotify’s free tier provides users with the lowest level of restrictions as compared to other services, this problem is rather unique to Spotify.

And it’s not like labels aren’t having their disagreements with Apple. As Macworld reports, record labels are reportedly standing firm against Apple’s plan for an $8 per month charge for their Beats service.

In fact, if Apple is hoping to offer its service for less than $10 per month, it will have to eat the costs. The industry isn’t taking any chances and as far as Sony Music head Doug Morris is concerned, “Free is death.”

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However, there is one streaming service out there that will let you listen (and watch) loads of music for free and on-demand, and the music industry is not trying to get it taken down. You may have heard of it, it’s called YouTube.

Of course, it’s important to remember that YouTube is much, much bigger than Spotify. Huge, in fact. 1 billion people use YouTube each month, while Spotify stakes a claim to just 60 million total users at last count.

YouTube is also nowhere near as convenient as Spotify and even has a paid service of its own that it’s slowly drip-feeding out. All things considered, YouTube is technically the biggest music streaming service in existence.

While it’s unlikely that YouTube will be affected by the new war for music, Doug Morris reckons that “free has been way overdone, and the biggest culprit is YouTube, with their links to free sites. This has to be curbed if we’re going to have a successful business”.

It’s not clear if the Google-owned platform is next on the labels’ hit list, but, as Business Etc reports, industry heavy-hitter Irving Azoff was recently threatening to sue the video giant over music permissions.

It’s also important to note that despite its colossal user base, as the Wall Street Journal reports, after nearly a decade of Google ownership, YouTube is still not turning a profit, leaving the rest of us to speculate about the company’s next move.

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