Spotify's "all you can listen to" model inherently implies they're going to be used as background music.
Could be worse. They could have their own musicians record popular songs and classics, and just pay the statutory royalty to the composer. Seeburg did that in the 1950s.[1] They sold the Seeburg 1000 background music system, and rented out phonograph records of background music, all recorded by Seeburg musicians. Stores rented and serviced the simple record changer, which endlessly played a stack of 25 records (both sides), about 50 hours of music. It's not a jukebox; it's much simpler.
Instead of copyrighting the disks (back then you had to register a copyright and pay for renewals), they used a primitive form of DRM - the records are 16 2/3 RPM, 9 inch diameter, 2 inch center hole, 0.005" stylus width, mono. This is incompatible with everything except a Seeburg 1000, though it's not hard to adapt a turntable to play them.
Someone has digitized the available Seeburg 1000 records, and you can listen to about 6000 songs of '50s - 70s background music.
Could be worse. They could have their own musicians record popular songs and classics, and just pay the statutory royalty to the composer. Seeburg did that in the 1950s.[1] They sold the Seeburg 1000 background music system, and rented out phonograph records of background music, all recorded by Seeburg musicians. Stores rented and serviced the simple record changer, which endlessly played a stack of 25 records (both sides), about 50 hours of music. It's not a jukebox; it's much simpler.
Instead of copyrighting the disks (back then you had to register a copyright and pay for renewals), they used a primitive form of DRM - the records are 16 2/3 RPM, 9 inch diameter, 2 inch center hole, 0.005" stylus width, mono. This is incompatible with everything except a Seeburg 1000, though it's not hard to adapt a turntable to play them.
Someone has digitized the available Seeburg 1000 records, and you can listen to about 6000 songs of '50s - 70s background music.
[1] http://radiocoast.com/