It is the first day of the #a2n_camp, the barcamp-y opener of Berlin Music Week and prelude to the #a2n conference taking place at the Kulturbrauerei Berlin. In the few panels I’ve been attending by now, one thing has become apparent: people here cannot not talk about Spotify. It creeps up in every conversation, it’s a talking point in every panel, as apparently streaming has become the main focus.

Streaming seems to have become the music industry’s weapon of choice for battling rampant piracy issues. Te best soundbite on this issues comes from Christoph Lange of simfy who, in the panel titled “Music in the Cloud”, stated:

”If I have a service that offers me music, now, and almost all artists – why would I have to use rapidshare?”

However, artists and managers are wondering about the economics of streaming, and especially those of Spotify, as most of them complain that there is no money to be made from streaming via this service. (Another tidbit from the aforementioned panel: apparently Lady Gaga received royalties of about €140 from the Swedish collection agency.) However, Spotify seems to be the only successful and widely adopted implementation of music streaming in Europe. So there is no real way to get around it, right now. So as much as they hate to talk about spotify, they can’t not talk about them.