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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?"
I wouldn't consider myself young anymore and I certainly prefer streaming over owning.
Foot placed squarely in mouth since 1983.
I can stream music on my phone, and I often listen in the car. I don't stream music while driving because it cuts out due to cell hopping and things. I'd have to get satellite radio for a better solution.
It's still much much easier to just use locally stored music - CDs or on my phone SD card or otherwise.
We seem to be going in circles with music. Own a phonograph, stream from radio, own an 8 track/cassette/CD, stream from TV (MTV or countless other music channels), own mp3's, stream from the Net
Without ownership, you're giving someone else the ability to take away your access. Once that happens a couple times, I think people will start moving back to an ownership model.
I think the cloud is great as long as it works. The problem is these services sometimes go away. I was personally bitten by the Google Video shutdown. They refunded the money I paid at the end, but I lost the shows I bought. Now I don't buy videos unless they're on DVD or Blu-Ray. At least I have the physical media and player in hand.
I guess it all comes down to how often do you want to pay for it? One time up front, or every single time you want to listen to it. For me it's the former. Also, the biggest fallacy in the article is "If their music is constantly available anywhere on any device, then 'what's the difference?" What happens when the service you're streaming from is no longer available or the RIAA revokes the licenses. What happens then? I guess people will just move on to the next hit and not care.
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"And may your days be long upon the earth."
Two thoughts come to mind here.
1) It's "liberating" in the same sense that being chemically castrated and color-blinded is "liberating" in Lois Lowry's The Giver. You are "liberated" from the onerous chore of responsibility for your own actions.
2) Oh, you know what, even though you've spent $100 bucks on every album by Blah Artist, he's now a bad influence on society. We, the corporations, will benevolently "liberate" you from such unwholesome thoughts. *287 files deleted*
For me, streaming is the opposite of what I want. Between ISPs wanting apply bandwidth caps and additional costs, or being able to play music in my car or wherever I want it, I definitely prefer to own.
Granted, I'm not covered under the definition of "young" here, so it's probably a generational thing.
I still pretty much exclusively get my music on CD, and transfer it to MP3 so I can play it on whatever device I want to.
I'm definitely in the "own not rent" camp.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
One of my favorite sayings is, "The more you own, the more you are owned." It's definitely a liberating feeling to not have to own and manage stuff, physical and virtual.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Indeed. Pandora, for example, is free and has less ads than a radio station. One can even up/downvote various songs so that it plays more music that you're interested in.
Even their paid service is only $36/year, has better quality, and no ads. Why would I bother to buy a small amount music (particularly on physical CD) when I could pay less (either $0 or $36/year) in exchange for essentially unlimited amounts of music any time I want it?
Then again, I have a 5-minute commute on the train and am in the lab all day working on an internet-connected computer, so my needs may be different from people with longer commutes and spotty internet service.
Call me cynical, but I'm concerned about loss of control without an actual copy of the music I want. Just like with radio right now, I could listen to [insert popular song of the day] just about any time I want, but come a year or two down the road, and that might not be the case. Add 10 - 20 yrs to that, and the song may be virtually impossible to find. I know that was the case with a number of some of my all-time favorite CDs - it took a lot of work to track them down. I'd rather not "hope" that someone else is making them available down the road - I can make sure I always have them by keeping my own copy.
Is this a video news release from the cell phone providers?
If their music is constantly available anywhere on any device, then 'what's the difference?,' ponders the article.
The difference is my bandwidth to my phones SD flash card is free, but my cell provider wants me to pay $50 per gig.
Hmm so I could rip a DVD that I own to my phone for free, or I could pay $ to download it over wifi, or I could pay $$$ in bandwidth charges to stream.
Also service sucks everywhere I go, so if I actually want to listen, rather than listen to buffering and pauses, then I need to download first.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
If you own your own fileserver, like files in particular format and tagged in just the right way, owning is the right option. You're trading the work of doing that yourself for the benefit of having your data the way you like it.
For a lot of people who either aren't capable of managing files or just not interested in doing that work, offloading music to "the cloud" or some streaming service makes sense - trading control for convenience.
I prefer the former option, but can understand the appeal of the latter.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Bandwidth and power used by internet infrastructure is a waste of money and energy compared to playing locally off a low power digital device. Streaming only serves to commodify usage similar to how industries have eked their way into every "payable" crevasse of our existence. Its vampiric how our little time here has been turned into being wage slaves for ideas such as this. Even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat.
As long as I can remember, most people listened to music on the radio -- people who dominantly listened to purchased music have always been the exception.
I once spoke to an elder, with a beard of white and an onion on his belt, who spoke of a certain 'amplitude modulation' by means of which he had 'streamed' music rather than owning it on one of the 78rpm vinyl-platter rotational media of the day....
I think a lot of people try to explain these things too rationally. I could be wrong, but in my mind it all comes down to the idea of "collecting".
See, when people used to collect records and VHS tapes and even DVDs, they didn't just want to listen to the music and watch the movies; they were amassing a collection. However you want to explain the psychology of it, it was pleasing to see your collection on a shelf. It was comforting to know that you were happy with your collection. You could say, "I have every Rolling Stones album ever," or whatever, and it was pleasing beyond the sum of the enjoyment you get from listening to each song individually. You even bought that one album you didn't like very much because otherwise, there was a hole in your collection. You'd think, "I have every Rolling Stones album... except that one. Well, I may as well get that one."
And that was part of where the music industry made its money. There were big hits that made a lot of money, but there were also a bunch of collectors amassing very expensive collections.
And then the whole thing went digital, and the idea of collecting has lost some of its luster. First of all, it's not something you can display on your shelf, so you don't get the satisfaction of having your collection also be a design choice in your house. At most, you might be satisfied when you go to sit through your computer, or as you scroll through your iPhone.
Secondly and perhaps just as importantly, the collection has lost its uniqueness. Sure, you may have every Rolling Stones album ever, but you can just copy it and give it to your friend, and now he has all of their albums too. So there's no status in it, and no accomplishment.
Aside from that, there's nothing personal in it. When you had physical copies, you might look at an old record and remember, "This is the first record I bought for myself when I was 16. I bought it with money from my first job. I listened to this exact physical record over and over until it started to wear out. Now there's a scratch in this one part of the song, and I know exactly when it is from memory, because I know this physical object so well." Now a song is some bits that get transferred from device to device, and are effectively identical to everyone else's collection of bits for that song.
So when you take away the aesthetic appeal of an actual collection, and you take away the uniqueness and the personal nature of it, there's nothing left but the listening. That's all people want: to listen to the music conveniently and cheaply.
In *theory* these media are supposed to be copy protected so you can't transfer them from one format to another.
Neither iTunes Store nor Amazon MP3 uses digital restrictions management for "the stuff you own" anymore as long as it's music. iTunes Store still uses DRM for movies and video games, but the article isn't about those.
Young listeners also lso have access to silly amounts of bandwidth almost without regard to their location. If there's not a WiFi hotspot, then the kid (or Mom/Dad) are paying for a large bandwidth cap on the smartphone.
They don't bother to learn directions anymore or explore because Google Maps or Yelp tell them exactly where to go. They don't wander what their friends are doing, their friends are desperately advertising their locations and activities on Facebook and "young listeners" hear it.
It's not surprise that Gen Y or Millennials are less likely to have their own copies of music. They understand bandwidth and internet access as ubiquitous. Most of us don't. We grew up with low-speed hardline modems, not always on broadband connections. We see wireless internet access as a luxury. They see it as a given.
Over the long haul ownership is the only thing that guarantees you access to the music of your life.
Many of the things that I loved when I was a college student are out of print, or just flat out not available except as rare items.
Streaming? Not available.
People streaming now will eventually own the music that ties into their memories, or lose it.
I lost my entire hard copy music collection in a house fire back in 2008. I took the insurance money for all the CDs and kept it. Fortunately, my computer hard drive survived the fire, so I still had the ripped MP3s, but in the four years since, I've only bought a handful of new albums/songs. Nonetheless, I actually listen to a much wider variety of music, and more often now too - all via streaming.
Pandora is easy, free, and available just about anywhere I go. I really can't rationalize paying for what I can get for free.
Necron69