Why The Music Industry Needs To Take A Positive View Of Streaming Music
By Mark Mulligan from Music Industry Blog.
Disruptive technology and the change it brings can be overwhelming, particularly when it threatens to change forever all that we have known. Streaming clearly fits this bill. But the impact of change is as much in the eye of the beholder as the disruption itself. While it would be bland and disingenuous to say that change is merely a state of mind, a positive outlook that is focused on the opportunities can make the world of difference.
To illustrate the point, here are three examples from the last century of how vested interests have viewed revolutionary new media technology.
This first quote is from the American author and essayist EB White writing in 1933 on the impact of radio. Here new technology is eloquently portrayed with an almost magical profundity.
This quote is from David Sarnoff, the Belorussian-American radio and TV pioneer who oversaw the birth of RCA and NBC. Here he is in 1939 talking about the advent of a TV broadcast network against the backdrop of the globe teetering on the brink of world war.
And then fast forward 70 odd years to the emergence of streaming music, and we get this….
Something certainly appears to have happened to the eloquence of observation over the decades. While I’m perhaps being a little unfair to our esteemed Mr Yorke his quote illustrates the stark contrast in how one can view impending change.
There is an inevitability about the shift in consumer behaviour of which streaming is merely a manifestation. We are moving from the distribution era when everything was about linearly programmed channels and selling units of stuff to the consumption era when consumers value access over ownership. Resisting fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour is a futile task. It’s what happened when the labels fought Napster tooth and nail and it took the best part of a decade for the music industry to recover from that mistake.
None of this is to say that the shift to streaming is going to be easy, but it is going to happen anyway. Artists, labels, managers, publishers all need to decide whether to work with streaming now, and have some control over the process, or wait until they have no choice at all.
Interesting point comparing streaming to radio.
I prefer to compare it to slavery.
It promises artists fortune but in reality it exploits them.
It provide consumers with cheaper goods
It allows the shareholders to build their empire
It was once legal
“None of this is to say that the shift to streaming is going to be easy, but it is going to happen anyway. Artists, labels, managers, publishers all need to decide whether to work with streaming now, and have some control over the process, or wait until they have no choice at all.”
Until streaming services find a way to be profitable, your entire premise is worthless. One of the reasons, so many of us are opposed to streaming, is that by offering their services for free, for so long, not only have they contributed to the perception that music has no value, they have also created a nearly insurmountable task of converting their free subscribers to paid.
As far as controlling the process, the recent ruling in favor of copyright holders being paid for pre-1972 songs is major and may collapse an already tenuous company, Pandora. Pandora isn’t focussed on making money by converting their subscribers from free to paying, their focussed on exploiting loopholes to pay less for music.
Any artist who can sell music and has a new release would be foolish not to delay the release of their new songs on Spotify and other streaming services and this has been proven over and over again. If Spotify can float an IPO and becomes temporarily flush with cash, they will pay more artists for new releases. While they can.
The future of music doesn’t rest with a digital delivery service, but rather with the creators. If the creators cannot afford to work as songwriters and musicians any perceived victory that technology my claim will be a false one. The authors get this as more and more of them take a stand against Amazon.
For fifteen years the digital community has talked about the benefits of exposure and the promise of alternative channels of income. For the most part these have not panned out and have only proven that musicians and songwriters survive when they can sell their recorded music.
The fans didn’t demand streaming any more than the fans demanded piracy. It was a free way to get music, not a revolution; people saw a way to make money off artists.
Streaming services rape artists. Why the fuck would anyone support that?
People do still buy if its personal – I am an artist and do believe that personally selling to fans is a great model – if only there was actual record shops at festivals you would see a dramatic change in the sale of records. If artists personalised the products and sold at festivals. I think this would improve physical sales.
We keep being told that consumers want streaming, but check out this recent survey by Ovum of over 15,000 people in 15 countries:
“Ovum asked the 15,000+ respondents what was the maximum monthly fee they would be willing to pay to subscribe to a music streaming service. Only 10% said they would be happy to pay the current going rate or above – 7% were willing to pay more than £5 and up to £10, with a further 3% prepared to pay more than £10. The highest share of respondents that agreed to pay something opted for up to £2. More than half of those surveyed said they would not pay anything.”
Doesn’t look like the plan for it to “scale” is going to work out too well …
I meant to add that 37% of those surveyed said they had no interest whatsoever in music streaming services, paid or free.
Here’s the link to the survey:
http://musicandcopyright.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/music-subscription-services-face-a-difficult-balancing-act-between-price-and-value/#more-1227