Streaming Could End Piracy, If Only The Music Business Would Let It
While windowing releases may be an effective marketing ploy for high profile artists like Adele and Kanye, such tactics serve to drive listeners to piracy, in a time when the music industry should be embracing – and improving on – streaming instead.
_____________________________________
Guest Post by Bryce Clemmer, Co-founder and CEO of Vadio.
In many ways, Kanye West’s release of his album/conceptual art project “The Life of Pablo” showed that he’s a groundbreaking artist when it comes to his thinking in the digital space. From his full-throated embrace of social media to his “lean startup” approach of releasing songs quickly, West is at the cutting edge — except in one respect. When it came time to officially release his album on 2/14, he chose to post it exclusively on the streaming service Tidal. Within a few days, the album was climbing the charts, albeit the chart of most pirated albums.
West is an investor in Tidal, so the deal probably makes some sense for him, but it sets a concerning example for the music world at large. It’s easy to point to stars like West, Adele, and Taylor Swift, all of whom have windowed their releases by releasing content exclusively on one platform or not making their music available on streaming sites at all and still been successful– but they are the exceptions, not the norm. And rather than realizing this, some in the music industry are looking to do more limited releases; label executives have recently announced plans to do more exclusive digital releases.
What they fail to realize is that digital and physical exclusives are not the same thing. Asking someone to drive a few extra miles to a store for a one-time album purchase is very different than asking them to sign up for a service that can cost upwards of $120 per year in order to access a single album. According to a Deloitte study, the average millennial spends $125 a year on music media, and the average per capita spend is only $48, so it seems unrealistic to expect people to greatly increase their music media budget in order to absorb this exclusive content
The rise of paid streaming services has helped cut piracy rates tremendously, but it remains a problem. There will always be a handful of people who choose to pirate content no matter what, but many people would rather consume in a more legitimate way, if only for the relative ease. As anyone who spent time on Napster back in the day, or a torrent site today, knows, the user experience is lacking. Most people would rather use YouTube, or Soundcloud, or a streaming service to listen to music — but when they can’t get that content via any of those destinations, they figure out a way around it.
Creating false scarcity in an age of abundance is a fool’s errand that will only serve to push people towards piracy. The current solutions are a great start, but by no means comprehensive — according to a survey by MusicWatch, many of those who pirate music want to “own” a copy of a song on their smartphone, citing concerns about data usage and the fact that they can’t get copies of remixes or bootlegs through legal means. If a marketplace could be created to address those needs, that could help solve the problem.
Making streaming music content available all over the web, rather than just in certain apps or on certain sites, could also help artists monetize their content and listeners and viewers consume without resorting to piracy.
The music business can push the boulder uphill all it wants, but the consumers have spoken, and they want more access and more music. This is a golden opportunity to make content available and monetizable — the industry just needs to shed past ideas and let it happen.
“Creating false scarcity in an age of abundance is a fool’s errand that will only serve to push people towards piracy.”
Let’s shred this BS quickly, because I’ve seen it too many times before.
1. There is no definitive study that proves streaming lessens piracy. In fact most of the sturdies I see claim the opposite.
2. Windowing continues to validate itself as the way to go.
3. Until I see a streaming service making money and people wiling to pay for it, it is not the future.
4. Streaming diverts revenue from creators in a major way. Many believe that streaming is really no better than piracy.
5. What really is needed is a campaign that celebrates the ownership of music, not a new technology that focusses on destroying it.
1: you can find both. 2: not true. Only valid for the biggest stars. 3: many pays for Spotify. Without their heavy expansion they might have a positive. 4: only some musicians do that. 5: why ownership? are you like 75 years old?
this article was paid by spotify.
streaming has not decreased piracy. wake up, artists.
“Creating false scarcity in an age of abundance is a fool’s errand that will only serve to push people towards piracy.”
Not true if anti-piracy laws were actually enforced.
Make pirates pay, and re-distribute that money to rights-holders.
The scarcity is not “false”, any more than a limited edition of any product is “false”
“they can’t get copies of remixes or bootlegs through legal means.”
..that’s because those are illegal…and therefore they should not “get” them.
“The music business can push the boulder uphill all it wants, but the consumers have spoken, and they want more access and more music.”
The “consumer” is not always right.
” asking them to sign up for a service that can cost upwards of $120 per year in order to access a single album. ”
They always have the option of doing without that music.
All i know from this end is you can keep on giving it away or stop playing it. Indie musos lose more career oportunities, live music consumption has tb and my sandwiches are much thinner. But noodles fill your belly easier as it shrinks. Council expects me to pay over $300 a year to busk even. Music is free unless you want to be a musician.