Dear streaming services,
Most of us can’t imagine life without streaming services anymore. I’ll be focusing mostly on music streaming services in this little “love letter”. Spotify was launched in 2006, which made me realize that I never consciously experienced the music industry without streaming services because my passion for music, its industry and culture in general bloomed later. It just simply wasn’t there yet at the age of 5. However, now I’m blessed with the fact that I can work towards my dreams and goals in the music industry while working with what I love most, music. I know, there are many debates about streaming services and about how they sometimes seem like a blessing and a curse at the same time for both, artists and consumers.
At first it seems like there are only benefits, at least for the consumers, when using music streaming services. If we talk about the subscription, you are able to listen endlessly to different music for a fixed price per month, you even have the option to download the music and listen to it when you are offline and new music is faster in your ‘library’ than you ever imagined. Looking at Spotify, there is even more; there are algorithms that make playlists for you with many different moods or goals. You have the ‘discover weekly’ playlist where you find a new personalized playlist every Monday, the ‘on repeat’ playlist with songs you listen to constantly, your own ‘release radar’ with the new release of that week from artists you follow and many more. And you have playlists that are made for you in specific genres. On top of that you also have general playlist for whichever mood you are in at that moment.
The music industry is a fast paced one, for sure. The streaming services are one of the assets that accelerate this development. Nowadays it is way easier to release music and to find a way to be heard compared to the earlier days. Not only due to streaming services, but also because of different social media platforms that all have their pros and cons. Mostly it’s recommended to use a combination of social media platforms, however, it depends on your goal which platform you can use best. If you are using different social media platforms it is recommended to post different content on each of them. That way followers have to follow you on every single one of the platforms to get every inch of content you have available.
Streaming services, together with social media, also made it a lot easier to share music with friends, family and followers. Whether it is music you like and want to support or part of your career and work, just a couple of buttons and touches and a song from a streaming platform is shared on social media. This is easy promotion for an artist, obviously it is far from everything, but the more a song gets shared the more people will learn about its existence. It is work that is basically done for you (the artist) by the unpaid fans.
One of the biggest discussions that come with music streaming services is the payment of the artists. Because streams do not generate a lot of income for an artist. If you google the pay per stream at Spotify then you’ll find that artists get paid between 0.003 and 0.005 US dollar per stream.
With cd’s for example artists get paid a certain percentage of the sales, which is pretty low. When their music is used for visual productions, they get a certain percentage which is way higher. This because it is seen as a different type of use. With a visual production the rights of the music are licensed, the same goes for plays on the radio. Through this process of licensing, radios get access to a certain catalogue and it doesn’t go per stream. Licensing gives the artist a higher percentage than when it goes per sold or streamed item. Now streams are seen as sold items to say it very general. However, the question we should ask is if the system that streaming services use isn’t closer to licensing than to selling. It is probably a discussing that won’t give us a fixed answer for a very long time, because there is so much more going on in that area of the industry.
It might be my generation or just my opinion in general, but I think that (music) streaming services still have so much potential. Not only for consumers, but for artists as well. I’m not arguing with you that it is hard and can be difficult from time to time, but it is all in how you use the streaming services. If you have clear goals and know what they can contribute in your career, there are many possibilities and doors to open.
As a person who is (hopefully) becoming a music industry professional (or at least finds her way in the industry) I find the streaming services extremely interesting. There is still so much research possible and so much of their potential isn’t even found yet. We still can be incredibly creative with them.
Let’s see what the future will hold!
All my love,
Anna
Dear Anna,
I am very sorry to say, that the contents of this topic doesn’t attract me at all.
I think I’m too old-fashioned. I’m stuck in the Sixty’s, I am afraid…
In those days we didn’t have streamingservices. I listened to the radio and the songs I loved I learned by heart.
And thanks to the fact that I could easily learn all the new songs, I loved, by heart, I had a kind of streaming service in my own head. My friends knew that, and when we were driving along in their car, they asked me to sing the new tophits, because they could only remember the chorus and not the verses…
In that perspective I think of lute-players from the Orient, who don’t have the music on paper, but they learned the melodies from their parents and kept them in their heart and head. So these tunes were delivered from father to son, or from mother to daughter.
Bur I do admire the way, in which modern people use streaming services to keep them well informed of the latest, the newest, musical developments, as you self do Anna.
But it doesn’t attract me at all.
Every now and again I pick up some new artists’ names and music, by stories from you. And every now and again, I’m surprised of the impact these songs from artists, who are completely new for me, impresses me: e.g. Ed Sheeran, John Mayer, to name a couple of my new favourite singers. Especially the contents of rhe songs from John Mayer are wonderful.
That is why I think this loveletter does have been very interesting for me.
Thank you for writing this loveletter, Anna!
Best Wishes,
Ed.