It seems that whenever a great, internet-based music service comes along that captures the public’s imagination it’s not long before it disappears again thanks for music industry short-sightedness. Muxtape was music/tech darling of last year, allowing people to create mixtapes of online music to share with others. In August it was closed down while it dealt with RIAA issues. Today it’s re-launched as a shadow of its former self because it couldn’t work out a satisfactory licensing model with the music industry for its original format.

When the original Napster was at its peak nine years ago it opened up an unrivaled library of music to its users. After it was shut down, free music continued to be available via peer-to-peer and BitTorrent piracy but that easy-to-use music library was never quite matched until a legal solution arrived in the form of Spotify late last year. Now it looks like Spotify’s library is being cut back because of, you guessed it, licensing issues.

Again and again, innovative services that engage the public with music in exciting new ways are crippled or destroyed due to the music industry’s pig-headedness. They tell us they want to move into the digital world but they do it such tiny, baby steps that they continually frustrate customers. The excuse we get every time is “licensing problems”.

Licensing is a very real issue, of course. Labels don’t always have control over recordings for the whole of the world, meaning that music can only be licensed to certain territories. Unless all the licensees around the world for a track agree, there’s no way the track will be available across the whole world. This is the problem that has hit Spotify this week.

Now, the idea of ‘territories’ is all very well when you’re dealing with CDs and physical shops but transfer it to the global digital realm and you just end up with a lot of frustrated potential customers. Isn’t it time for traditional ideas of territories to be torn up and replaced with a truly global strategy?

It certainly can’t happen overnight, and there are a lot of contracts that would need renegotiating) but it certainly needs to happen soon. Only then will we stop the ridiculous scuppering of strong ideas that have potential because of outdated pieces of paper.