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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 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.
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.
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 don't know what Linkin Pork and NStynk is, maybe you're a dumb child and meant NSync and Linkin Park. Anyway, people cover those bands too, you're just not going to the right bar. Is it really surprising that the places you visit cover songs you like? Are you really so dense that you don't realize that the same thing will be happening in other bars with songs you dislike?
Music was always disposable. People recorded over casettes, people listened to songs or bought albums and then shelved them for years. There are some songs out right now that I could see myself listening 30 years from now, even if it's "new stuff". The entire music field isn't just NSync and Lady Gaga. There are also older songs that I'll rock on to. How surprising is this, really?
Your taste changes, it's like food. You don't eat the same thing every week do you? "New music is shit" is a really stupid statement, it's moronic to deep levels. It just means you liked the old style better. You're not different from a lot of other people who also like older music. You'll also find older people hating old music and preferring the new stuff. I heard a grand mother request System of a Down on radio a few years ago, she didn't seem to mind that it wasn't Led Zeppelin.
Oh, I get it. Your tastes are better than everyone else's, and the music you don't like is shit. See the thing is, that applies to you too. Your music is shit and my taste is better than yours.
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.
Maybe it's all about value for money. I could either spend $10 a month, and have access to all the music ever recorded, or I could spend $10 a month and get one (maybe less) album per month. After 6 years of buying albums, I'd have 72 albums, or about 1000 songs. Why would I bother buying music when I could spend less and get more? Obviously there's no service that has all the music ever recorded but there are some services out there that have quite a large selection of music. Why would I want to spend money on buying CDs when I could have them stolen or broken. Why would I want to spend money on MP3s when a hard drive crash could mean that I have to buy them all over again (has Appled fixed this issue yet with iTunes, I know in the past you couldn't re-download songs you had already purchased).
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.