Young Listeners Opt For Streaming Over Owning

An anonymous reader writes "CNN reports that younger listeners are increasingly opting to stream music rather than own it. If their music is constantly available anywhere on any device, then 'what's the difference?,' ponders the article. The distinction between streaming music and owning music is starting to blur. From the article: 'But Van Buskirk also suggests another reason for streaming, not acquiring music. It's liberating. "There is a certain relief with not having to own music. It is a lot of work," he said. ... Porter says the way people own music is transforming. He believes the cloud model is where the state of music is heading, and for many people ownership is not essential. "I think ownership is access, you don't have to have music on your local hard drive to own it," he said.' Will the concept of ownership of music and software fade as cloud based services become the way people expect to access media and software?"

Comments

Re:Young listeners?

[mcgrew]

"Oh, yeah, I'll get this, listen to it for a few months, but doubt I'll throw it on again."

If you remember, you were probably similar to this; I was in some ways. Only instead of streaming I'd copy it on tape from a friend's LP, and music that was kinda ok but not really good got recorded over. After being burned once or twice by buying an album with a great song and finding that the rest was crap, I got to the point I'd only buy live and greatest hits albums, unless they were from a band that I'd already bought and liked everything.

But pretty much everything I've bought...I listen to OVER and over again...and have for decades.

So are the kids... only it's our generation's music they're listening to over and over again. Go to any live cover band in a bar full of twentysomethings. They're not covering NStynk and Linkin Pork, they're covering Zeppelin and Skynard and Van Halen and the like.

I never get tired of hearing Dark Side of the Moon, or The Wall....and I usually play those in their entirety, from beginning to end since to me..they are whole pieces of music...the whole album is.

I was discussing that very same thing with a young person here a while back. He said that "Money" didn't really fit the album. I had to explain to him that DSOM was engineered to be listened to in two movements; play side one, and turning the LP over is an intermission. To some extent, that's how most such albums were designed, and how I lpay them. When I'm listening to MP3s or oggs, I have TenSecondsOfSilence.MP3 between sides.

I'm trying to figure out...when did music become disposable?

When it became flushable.