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Streaming Services Help Global Music Industry To Fastest Growth in Nearly 20 Years (billboard.com)
The global music industry grew by 5.9 percent in 2016, its fastest rate of growth since 1997, as revenue generated by streaming services surged 60 percent. From a report: The IFPI's Global Music Report (previously known as the Digital Music Report) states that trade revenue generated by the global recorded music industry climbed by 5.9 percent to $15.7 billion, with digital sales up 17.7 percent across the board. After digital revenue surpassed physical for the first time in 2015, digital hits another milestone in 2016, accounting for 50 percent ($7.8 billion) of all music sales for the first time. More importantly, 2016 marked the second successive year that the recorded music market grew after nearly two decades of continually falling sales during which revenues dropped by almost 40 percent at their lowest point. [...] Breaking down the Global Music Report findings, the mass adoption of streaming services such as Spotify, Amazon and Apple Music in both established and emerging markets is -- as expected -- the main driver behind the industry's sustained upturn.
I'm glad streaming services are really taking off, it is lowering the bar of entry into the "industry" (ugh, I hate calling music an industry). Many more artists are able to get themselves heard without having to have a record contract. However, most streaming services rape artists just like record companies by giving them such a low percentage of profits. Sure this has something to do with streaming services having to pay royalties to the Big 4, but it still doesn't make it right. Artists deserve to be compensated more fairly for their work. Something that might encourage people to pay artists, not because they *have* to via music streaming revenue, but because they know that the majority of their payment will actually (gasp!) go to the artist, would definitely be something I'd take part in. Otherwise, I look at streaming services with the same goggles as I do if I were purchasing a CD in a brick and mortar store - by knowing full well that the artist who created the music in the first place will probably see 1-5% of my money. Fuck that.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
it's also just easy to copy music with a computer.. (even easier than via napster i'd argue, albeit possibly slower)
step 1. spotify free/youtube, whatever
step 2. audacity
step 3. record whatever you like.
done.
as long as the analog hole exists, there will be pirates. the goal should be make purchasing the music as cheap and effortless as possible. because at the end of the day, they are competing against free. more carrot, less stick -- is the only way forward.
I'm a long-time audiophile (it's kind of a disease; a fun one, if you can afford it). Never in a million years did I think I'd pay for a streaming service. My main objections are lossy encoding (MP3 or similar) and not having any product whatsoever, digital or otherwise (CD, vinyl). But now that services are coming along that offer CD quality (PCM, 44.1 kHz/16 bit - or perhaps higher) I finally broke down and subscribed to one of them (Tidal). What I like the most is being able to browse the catalog and play new stuff, remotely piloting a Squeezebox Touch that feeds a DAC that feeds "the good stereo". Twenty bucks a month for an unlimited CD quality catalog is a pretty good bargain if you are a voracious music consumer.
At the same time, I continue to buy a little new and used vinyl here and there, but mostly for the fun of it, as I'm just old enough to remember when records were the main media for music. So if you are a format fetishist, you can buy records and CDs will be out there for a long time (and used CDs are cheaper than dirt).
I do wonder how the artists will fare with streaming. I suspect poorly, as always, and that the people who will make the money will be the labels and the streaming services. I hope I'm wrong.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
"Music has gotten STALE over the last ten years. Not even bad, just more of the same."
Nope. You've gotten ten years older and can detect patterns faster and are bored by them.
Mostly random stuff.