Universal Music CEO Lucian Grainge Wants You to Pay Up: The Code/Media Interview

The world’s biggest music label used to be OK with people streaming music on the Web without paying for it. But now it has changed its mind: Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge says the music industry needs to shift away from free, ad-supported music and toward services paid for by you, the listener.

That was the message Grainge brought to the Code/Media conference last month, and it’s shared by other top music executives, as well as Apple, which wants to relaunch its own paid subscription service this year.

In the less-than-enthusiastic camp are Spotify and YouTube, which offer their own paid services, but say that offering free music on-demand is crucial to their model — and good for the music business.

This is going to be a big debate this year. You can watch part of the argument via Grainge’s conversation with Re/code’s Dawn Chmielewski.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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