http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/59ca997925acc21e008b62e0-800/riaa-breakdown-2015-2017large.png
So what does this mean for investors, and the future of paid music streaming? It is clear that paid music streaming is the future of the industry, with Spotify, Apple Music, and Pandora as the three leaders of the market, each with different outlooks for the future. Pandora finished the second quarter with only 390,000 Pandora Premium subscribers, and will rely on its free ad-supported tier to continue to be the primary source of Premium subscribers. Apple, only offering a paid subscription, foresees its service revenue to increase to $50 billion by 2020, with Apple Music being the main driver. Spotify on the other hand continues to offer both ad-supported and paid tiers to its services. Spotify is expecting to go public in the near future, with its Premium businesses $7.2 billion run rate.
1. How do you think artists feel about the transition from in-store purchases of their music, to paid subscriptions with access to all of their music?
2. What do you think the transition means for the future of the music industry, and do you see this increase in paid streaming to continue?
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-music-industry-continues-to-bounce-back-thanks-to-paid-streaming-2017-9
Good topic John. I think many of us in this class can speak on this topic as nearly everybody uses some sort of music streaming service to listen to their favorite artists. To answer your first question I would say that artists are split on their feelings towards this topic. In 2014 Taylor Swift spoke with the Wall Street Journal stating that one of her biggest concerns was that streaming would devalue the art of music and refused to release her songs on spotify and apple music due to their 3-month free tier policy. On the other hand, Armin Van Buuren, who has more than 1.4 million followers on Spotify, points out that free streaming doesn’t mean artists don’t get paid. It’s just that their pay comes from advertising rather than more traditional sources. I would say that this a very large and complex topic as these new services create a gap between 'known artists' and less popular ones but in the end it is ultimately where the music industry is heading and most likely won't change.
ReplyDeletehttp://au.blogs.american.edu/audio-technology/how-streaming-is-changing-the-music-industry/
I found this topic very interesting. It is astounding how much revenue is brought in just by streaming every year, and how much it is growing. Im sure some artists are upset that now instead of fans buying their albums you can get all their music just by a subscription to a website. It seems as if it takes away from the art of music in my opinion. To answer your second question I absolutely think this transition into paid streaming will grow. It is so much easier to pay a monthly subscription of five to ten dollars and have all the music that you want versus going out and buying an album from one of your favorite artists for 14.99 and only have those 15 or so songs. I think you would enjoy this article I read, that talks a lot about how this transition will continue to grow.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7744268/riaa-us-music-industry-2016-revenue-double-digit-growth
I really thought this was a very interesting tech briefing and how in retrospect we used buy albums 10 years ago and now we simply listen to our favorite albums on either Apple Music or Spotify. To answer your question, I don't think most artists are very fond of being paid per stream. Per the article written by the Verge, artists receive between $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream. For highly streamed artists such as Drake, Kendrick, and Rihanna, they definitely receive big checks from Spotify, but for the up and coming artists, they would definitely prefer the old-school way of purchasing an album for $ 10-20 in-store instead of being paid a few pennies for each stream by Spotify. This model is unfair to some artist and some are content with the music streaming services offered by Apple and Spotify. Hopefully in the future there will be a model that could be beneficial to artists on both sides of the spectrum.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9861372/spotify-year-in-review-artist-payment-royalties
Some artists do not stream their material. Prince only put his music up on Tidal, before his estate released all of his material. Beyonce posted on Tidal first (and on HBO) before she streamed Lemonade. You could of course, buy it. Taylor Swift does not stream, except a few songs and her videos. Frank Ocean only streamed his video on Apple. So some artists are getting paid, if they decide to do things differently. Plus, most artists get paid from their active touring (sometimes alone and/ or with musical festivals) and merch. Streaming is where fans get to know their works and then pay the money to see them live. Royalties are not where the money is any more. At least, it's a different way to make money than depending on royalties. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteI believe that there are both positive and negative aspects to this transition to streaming. I do agree with many of the points you have made although I would assume many artists have a negative view of this. Many of today's popular artists are now at the discretion of these streaming services that can chose to give a much smaller percentage of their profits. In the article I have attached it gives an example of how specific artists feel that they have been "exploited" by this.
ReplyDeletehttp://thefederalist.com/2016/08/01/why-music-streaming-is-bad-for-democracy/