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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.
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.
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.
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....
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.
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.