The Effects of Online Streaming on the Music Industry
Daddy Yankee, Justin Bieber, and Luis Fonsi shattered records with “Despacito” after the song reached an aggregate amount of more than 4.6 billion streams within six months. This spot was previously occupied by the hit song, “Sorry,” by Justin Bieber at around 4.4 billion streams. Music enthusiasts everywhere and websites like filmlifestyle.com infos are well aware of this fact. Before, people would need to buy physical albums to listen to 1 or 2 hit songs heard on the radio. Nowadays, individual songs or records are no longer purchased as MP3 files because they are now commonly streamed online through a subscription-based platform.
Changes in the Industry
Music consumption has developed and evolved rapidly within a few decades from the first music system portable, which is the cassette player playing the Sony walkman in the late ’70s. The cassette gave way to Apple’s first known product, the popular iPod in the early 2000s. Consumers transitioned from buying tapes to audio discs, to paying for each MP3 songs. Jumping to 2017, we are now experiencing online services for streaming, which allow customers to play songs online without downloading the MP3 files. Some of the biggest names in streaming services are Tidal, Pandora, Apple Music, Spotify, each having individual offers on using their streaming platforms. In this age where music has become easy to download and access, music enthusiasts preferred online streaming because it eliminates the need for having big data storage for their devices, allows changing between genres and artists, and offers music personalization of individual subscriptions.
Effects of Streaming Services
People wonder if streaming services harm the music industry and are concerned that if the increasing quantity of music tracks will compromise the quality of song releases in the future. This is not true because the shift of music digitally changed the way on how music is released. Many artists and singers experiment on this market because it gives them a chance to release a single song instead of providing an entire album, which is more difficult to perfect and is time-pressuring. This format offers indie and independent artists to share and create their music on known platforms like SoundCloud.
Improvement of Sales
MP3 purchases and downloads have declined steadily over the last few years by as much as 20 percent yearly. Since then, the revenue for record labels has declined steadily until 2016. Streaming became popular this year, with over 100 million subscribers registered over various streaming platforms online. Record companies have partnered with these platforms to increase their income through ad revenue and paid subscriptions on their various artists’ records.
Streaming changed the music industry through singles rather than albums. It eliminated the need to buy additional device storage and improved music suggestions based on multiple searches by subscribers on platforms.