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."

Comments

No thanks

[ArcadeMan]

I already have enough monthly bills.

Re: No thanks

[AvitarX]

I'm thrilled with what I get for 9.95 with Google play.

A selection of "radio" stations tailored to my interests and the time of day/day of week, with holidays accounted for, really good automatic station based on whatever I've been listening too lately, but within a genre, and the ability to have a library that I can side load to.

It's increased my music spending a little, but made driving so much more pleasant.

Re:No thanks

[SternisheFan]

Yep...iTunes and compatible player and you can listen to What you want, When you want, Where you want.

I can't imagine being tied to an internet connection AND an entity on other end of the connection controlling things. Might as well just buy a freaking FM radio.

I've bought music since 8-track, vinyl record, cassette & CD days. MP3s are a God-send! I've ripped all my personnally bought music to MP3, keep it backed up on multiple computers/ usb/ microSD cards/ external hard drives. Also lots of borrowed CD's from the local library. I won't ever need to stream my music for a monthly fee, no reliance on an internet connection, it's just always there.

Re:No thanks

[cascadingstylesheet]

I already have enough monthly bills.

Eh. I used to buy at least one CD per month. Each CD cost more than I pay now per month for streaming, and I got a couple of good songs and some filler (most of the time) instead of thousands of good songs.

Yes, I could buy used CDs and store and organize them in my basement and digitize them all myself and store and back the digital files up in my own RAID array, and then they'd be mine, all mine my precioousssssss ...

Or I can just pay 9.95/mo and not worry about any of that. I'll take option B.

What about radio?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> 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.)

Streaming sucks

[fustakrakich]

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.

I'm amazed

[JustNiz]

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.

Re:I'm amazed

[vux984]

You're basically paying regularly/multiple times to hear the same music you could just pay for/download once.

True. On the other hand you don't have to buy songs you only listen 2 twice, or listen to for a week and then tire of never to listen to them again. Depends on your personality.

The economics becomes a question of do you explore new music more or less than you return to old favorites.

Because your right, if you just like pink floyd, then buy the discography and never pay for music again. Win!

On the other hand if you've got 10,000 tracks in your itunes collection and not one of them has been listened to more than 3 times then what is the point of buying anything ever?

Most of us are somewhere in between those two extremes. And at the right price points streaming becomes more sensible than buying.

I'd take spotify at half the current price. I already sub scribe to netflix.

1) You can't listen to your music when you dont have an active internet connection.

Spotify has offline support. Its not quite as bad as you suggest.

Re:I'm amazed

[ArcadeMan]

Just for giggles, I stream music from bands I like, even if I have the CD, just so they can get a couple bucks from me.

Thank you for the 1/10th of a cent.

Signed,
the bands you like.

Re:Japan is easy to explain

[MightyMartian]

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.

Time to buy vinyl?

[ponos]

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.

Re:Viable for artists?

[Rinikusu]

My band(s) has already given up any notion of making any money on digital sales or streams, not to mention CDs. We press records and cassettes these days, and do CDRs of live show recordings and that's it. No CD press runs at all. Weird how it seems we're back in 1992. (CDs basically mean they sit around in boxes in the garage, taking up space. We've sold out of every record and (recently) cassette we've produced. It's still not a huge number (like 300 or so of each.. for a local band that's not bad) and none of us can quit our day jobs, but basically one record or one cassette sale is > everything we've gotten from digital at this point).