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How Long Will It Take Streaming To Dominate the Music Business?
journovampire writes with this story about the booming music streaming business. "Streaming is on course to make more money for the U.S. music business than downloads and physical sales combined within the next three years. The U.S. appears poised for streaming to become its most valuable music format in either 2016 or 2017, according to MBW forecasts – so long as you include SoundExchange royalties generated by digital radio platforms like Pandora alongside subscription and ad-supported platforms like Spotify. But in the other three biggest recorded music markets in the world – France, Germany and Japan – the public appears more hesitant to allow streaming to take over."
I already have enough monthly bills.
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>> money for the U.S. music business than downloads and physical sales
What about radio? That seems like the closest competition. (When I use a streaming service, in large part it's because I want some background music without worrying about picking songs.)
The better question is how long will it take for streaming to be viable source of income for artists? The only people who make money via streaming are the aggregators.
As long as you can be blocked based on location, it's no damn good. We have to tear down the borders to make it work the way the internet is supposed to work, wide open worldwide, otherwise just stick with torrents to get what you want when you want it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I jsut don't get why all the people that will make streaming more popular than downloading are ignoring the obvious downsides of streaming vs. local storage:
1) You can't listen to your music when you dont have an active internet connection.
2) You're basically paying regularly/multiple times to hear the same music you could just pay for/download once.
I don't need it on physical CD, but I do need to actually own the music files themselves, in an unlocked non-DRM fashion. Basically, if I can't buy it as at least an MP3 that I can play on everything from an iPod to an FreeBSD workstation, the record label doesn't get my money. And I could care less about streaming.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This economy baffles me. I rent a house, lease a car, subscribe to a Adobe software, pay-per-view TV, stream music, and play online-DRM games and god knows what else. The day I stop having income, I don't own a thing. I am not by any means going back to the age of carrying chunks of gold on my person, but I get the impression property is quickly being replaced by service in too many aspects of our living. Although practical and convenient, this can only amplify the financial insecurity of the middle/lower classes.
Well, if the shit hits the fan, I can always listen to my vinyl collection.
I can't buy a physical music CD that is more than 3 months old in any physical store any more. Even at that, if the CD isn't top40 it is highly unlikely I can find it anywhere. We used to have used music stores all over the place too, and they are all but extinct. Now the best music selection in town is ... at a book store, where their music area is less than the size of my kitchen.
I'd say streaming and digital sales have already won.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Streaming really only makes sense to me for disposable music, like modern pop music. You know the stuff. The candy sweet radio friendly tunes that are auto-tuned to hell and EQ'd and processed to sound just like a previously successful pop song. The stuff you can hear a few times then want to turn off the radio if it comes on again. I don't listen to that sort of music, it bores me, so I don't bother with a streaming account.
I'm the sort of person who still buys albums, albeit on CD these days. I only buy the ones from artists which I think have a long shelf life and a lot of re-playability. I like the fact that I can toss on an album I've had for almost 30 years and just listen to it again, without needing an internet connection or a current subscription. I like that I get to hear the 'b-sides', the tracks which don't get promoted or aren't considered good enough for radio / streaming highlighting. I actually enjoy many of those tracks far more than the one or two that are there to sell the album. If an artist can't place 6-10 good tracks on a record, then I'm not really interested in hearing what they have to say.
I rip all my CDs to lossless FLAC, iTunes, and MP3 at the same time, then store the archive quality FLACs on my media server. ITunes can't play back FLAC, so I basically don't use it any more, preferring XBMC to get the job done.
I have about 350 albums now that I own and can playback whenever and wherever I choose without needing an internet connection or the permission of some greedy corporation who lock my playback down to only work on their hardware (I'm looking at you Apple!).
I've been collecting music for about 30 years now and still have access to every track I bought (bar the early stuff on LP). If I subscribed to a service for 30 years, all I'd have at the end is the sense of regret I couldn't listen to any music any more, despite the thousands I had spent on it over the years. That's approximately $5400 at today's rates, about the same as I pay for close to 380 albums. The cost is about the same, but if I stopped collecting today, I'd still have 350 albums to listen to.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Unless you are getting streamed music that delivers the *full* recording experience, a lot of musical nuance will be wasted. How many people today, especially young people, have ever heard *all* of the audio quality that was recorded, delivered via streaming? It's true that much of the musical experience in a streamed file can be enjoyed, but it's a shame to see the fine nuances of musical overtones and distinctive instruments missed because you're not getting a full bandwidth or recording experience.
I live in Sweden, where Spotify rule. I, my family, all my relatives and all my friends have not bought a CD or an iTunes/whatever song for...sheaa..I don't really remember when I saw one of those... Maybe 2-3 years ago? Either way, the streaming music has already replaced the old way of doing things. It's just the music-industry trying hard to not make it look that way, since they make so much more money the old way. If my grandmother would actually buy me a CD, I would ask for the receipt. (She wouldn't though, since she knows I have Spotify).