I came across a New York Times’ “Room for Debate” article entitled, “Is Streaming Good for Musicians?” The title intrigued me since many artists’ music is on these streaming apps like Spotify and Apple Music. Some artists left these platforms to increase album sales. Although this strategy will likely work well for them, it should not become the dominant response to streaming if lessons of the past are to shape the future. All of these artists’ songs and albums have value in them since the artist may have produced or co-produced them. For example, a single album is worth approximately $18, but a Spotify user can listen to the album for free, with minimal ad interruption. (Spotify Premium users are spared ads.) Streaming might help in attracting people to live shows, but that is unmeasurable.
Even though streaming is convenient for people to listen to their favorite artists from various genres, some artists dislike the idea of streaming their music for free. It seems unfair that artists don’t get paid enough after letting these streaming apps obtain their music, especially how complicated payments can be. Although competition has always been fierce in the music industry, and while streaming has made things slightly more democratic and arguably fairer, it’s never been harder to be heard. Sales have been declining for over a decade while many artists still encourage fans to buy their singles or albums. This trend won’t reverse or gradually decrease over time. It’s mainly due to the fact anybody who knows how the Internet works can get their hands on literally any album or song these days from thousands of heavily-trafficked piracy sites for no money whatsoever. With music listeners everywhere now paying $9.99 per month for streaming subscriptions, most people don’t see a reason to purchase anything. What are your thoughts? Are music streaming websites bad for old and new artists? What can these websites do to make these acquisitions fair?
- Devin Caldejon
Personally, as an avid music listener and a musician, I see where both sides are coming from. I love services like Spotify for the vast amount of music i can listen to both from bands I already love and new bands I might just discover. However, I feel that streaming is a game based on volume and numbers. Spotify pays the holder of the music rights about $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream. If you're a band like the Rolling Stones and you have millions of fans already who buy the vinyl and CD's and go see you in concert, the amount you get paid by streaming services is irrelevent to you. However, let's say you're a new band or artist and you wanna get your music out there. To put your music on Streaming services without a label to help costs $20 a month. If your following is small, you're losing money technically speaking. So to wrap this up, I see why people love it, but also I can see where people who hate it are coming from.
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