Spotify Can't Live on $10 a Month

With Spotify shooting for a public listing next year, it's time for the leading independent music-streaming service to step up its game. No more blaming the big, bad record labels for everything. No more excuses for why the business remains stubbornly unprofitable despite doubling revenue last year and adding subscribers rapidly.

Spotify does suffer from paying 70 percent or more of its revenue to the music industry, but those fees are not necessarily a death sentence. So here is some advice: Spotify should take a baseball bat to its pricing structure, namely the $9.99 monthly cost for its all-you-can-eat subscription service1472483433525. That price -- now a standard for comparable streaming offers from Apple, Tidal, Deezer and others -- is an artifact of the record-store business model. It became obsolete long ago.