Is Streaming Bad For The Music Industry?
First it was, "Fans want to feel it."
Then it was, "Fans want to own it."
Now it's, "Why own when I can save?"
One of the unforeseen impacts of the global economic downturn on the music industry is the accelerated rate of consumers' adoption of streaming music… And this means trouble for the already wounded music industry.
It takes 150-200 plays of a song before the content owner earns royalties on par with one download. Content owners typically get paid 70 cents per download and half a penny per stream. How long does it take the average fan to stream a song 150 times—six months? Twelve months? Longer? There's the cash-flow issue.
– Robb McDaniels, CEO of digital distributor INgrooves in a Billboard op-ed
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hypothetically, if the entire world switched to streaming (exclusively), it would be a ‘blessing’. Artists could effortlessly control their rights and a myriad or pricing options. We should be so lucky to have everyone just decide (all of a sudden) to ditch the inefficient ownership/MP3 model (sharing included).
I’d be willing to bet, in the wide world of net music, it’s easier to get 100 streams than 1 sale (after all, look at myspace ‘plays’). Streaming also devalues the fan — as pointed out, a die-hard fan probably won’t stream your song 200 times in a year, whereas a legion of casual listeners Pandora-ing an influence of yours likely will.
But, my understanding of royalties is that in most countries it is handled by a PRO, and that someone would have to be registered in each country where a stream occurred, in order to receive the ‘full’ payment. And the bigger names tend to earn a disproportionately larger cut. Am I wrong?
A stream of a full song is just yet another format
competing with those formats that can (still) be sold.
By now, there are quite a few songs – and in fact, even
albums – available on the web as a stream in inferior
sound quality that I would buy if they existed for sale
in a lossless format. Some of them even do, but they don’t
ship to my country. Needless to say, all of these are
independent product.
As I listener, I call that practise of promotion without
a product “some CDs are playin’ hard to get”.
I don’t want to name names here because I don’t want to
embarrass any of these artists, but they would sell stuff
if only they were offering it in lossless quality instead
of compressed versions.
Thanks to iTunes, I would get these songs in 128k quality,
but that is simply not enough. Maybe the artists believe
if there is a stream and a 128k product for a few cents,
that would be enough. It is not.
And I don’t want a T-Shirt or a subscription either. The
lossless music will do.
That’s why I’m falling in love with Bandcamp.com — download whatever format you want. If only the rest of the indie world would follow…