"Streaming has killed the mainstream"

I had never heard of Judee Sill until I was in my forties. And listened to her albums via streaming (ironically enough).

But streaming is evil and must be stopped

 

as someone who has music that is streamed (consumed) i have no problem with it. it is the way folks access music these days. the majority of my royalties comes from streaming. our record company still prints limited vinyl editions of our albums which also seem to sell, CD's pretty much are history.i have no problem with folks being able to stream music i made to hear and hopefully enjoy. for the record.

 

Streaming is essentially radio all over again. I think the same old dynamic will persist - casual music fans will simply listen, earnest music fans will collect.

 

Same. I've always used streaming for its convenience

 

This point has probably already been brought up ad infinitum, but I was thinking the other day about how the musical charts are now being dictated by the number of streams rather than the number of purchases. This, to me, probably has had a profound effect because there is far less investment involved in streaming a song than going out and buying a single or CD or whatever. As a result, current measures of musical "success" can be influenced by people who are far less invested in music in general compared to before. You could argue that this makes musical trendsetting more "egalitarian" as a result, but what does it really mean then when you don't even have to be a person who follows a particular artist or would actually set out to a store to buy music anymore to have an impact?

 

I just started to use a streaming service, which is pretty convenient as I'm in the car most of the day. I love it, and at the same time I can get why a lot of people are worried that it's 'evil', or what have you. All I know is, I started listening to Manic Street Preachers 'The Holy Bible' album, and I love it so much that I ordered the box set. So it seems in my case at least, it helped the artist.

 

Same effect here.

Looking forward to the "how many new 2019 albums did you purchase?" thread that usually shows up right around this time. I'm sure all the streaming naysayers have been offsetting that evil tool with all the albums they've purchased.

And I don't mean reissues.

 

There are many examples of this - people buying something after first hearing it via streaming. I've done this many times, Someone in this thread who is in their 20s has done it, so it's not just an older person thing.

Still, it does not matter how many examples are quoted at someone, if that someone has decided they WANT to believe that streaming is killing the music business. Never let the truth get in the way of a good theory.

 

Except it's not like radio, in that A) users select what they want to listen to, when they listen to it, and how often; and B) users pay for it. Of course, one can use it like radio -- just listening to the ad-supported platform and just listening to playlists. But for the tens of millions of people who pay for streaming subscriptions, it's much more like buying CDs or LPs, except you don't have to pay piecemeal for each CD or LP, you just pay a service fee for access to the library.

 

Of course streaming is not precisely like radio. I don't think anyone here needs to have it explained how streaming works.

The point of the radio analogy is that, like radio, streaming facilitates the discovering and listening to music for little or no cost, and many users go from there to actually buying the physical recording. A purchase they would not have made otherwise, since it seems the point requires belabouring.

 

Streaming has actually saved the music business. Music industry sales and revenue were in free fall for 15 straight years, shrinking by more than half on an inflation adjusted basis before the growth of paid streaming began three or for years ago and completely turned the trend around and music industry revenue began growing again. Streaming has done the opposite of kill the business.

In terms of people buying music they first heard via streaming, no doubt that's true. But it can't be happening in enormous quantities because its not showing up in sales growth of physical media or download media. Sales of physical media continue to flatline or decline (growth in vinyl sales dollar volume insufficient to offset continuing drops in CD sales) and sales of downloads have cratered, while streaming continues to grow at like 20+% rates year over year. People are substituting streaming for purchases at a much higher rate than the rate at which streaming is driving people to make purchases.

 

Streaming can't be that effective as a tool for driving sales because the purchase of physical media continues to flatline or decline, and the purchases of downloads is cratering, while the growth of paid streaming is increasing by double digit percentages every year. No doubt's it's driving some purchases. But based on the sales number, it mostly has to be functioning as a substitute for purchasing.

 

I blame Thomas Edison. We used to have no choice but to listen to live music, even if it was just in our sitting rooms.

And home taping was the final nail in the coffin.

 

I think the other poster is talking more about new buyers - those who, a decade or so earlier would have just torrented stuff and purchased what they liked. Now the model has moved to streaming + purchases for a new generation.

The numbers are never going to be high - again, more the outliers than the norm. But "the genie is out of the bottle" so to speak, we're not going back to FM radio, AOR and DJ's picking what they think we should listen to. That may have pushed more physical media purchases, including a lot of 45's for the "songs only" crowd of which there were many. But that model isn't coming back.

 

Hey, at least he tried to ban jazz music

 

Remember at least the Billboard Hot 100 was never exclusively a purchases chart. Radio airplay was always a big component of it.

 

Never heard of Judee Sill in my life until today, but it turns out I own every album she ever made and I’m listening to it right now, it’s really good.

But streaming is evil and must be stopped.

 

People haven’t “gone to a store” to buy music since 2002 when it all went iPod and iTunes after years of ripping and Napster.

As for the money spent, the average iTunes user was spending $40 a year- 3 albums and 10 singles downloaded. 15 years, averaging $40.

Today, the average streamer is spending $120 per year for a subscription. So we’re more invested financially than we’ve been in decades. And we’re building curated playlists and collections and libraries from the 45 million songs we now own. This is all positive. This is good for music. It’s why streaming has saved the industry.

 

Really? Did they not release records that got national distribution?

The public didn't widely embrace them. But because there only a limited amount of music being released, they had a chance to eventually find their audience.

 

For the tiny niche of audiophiles, sure, some boxed CD sets and a few vinyl record sales have come from streaming discovery. Look at the numbers, it’s made no dent at all in the deficit of those defunct formats.

For everyone else? Forget that. Why would I buy what I already own? Since I gave up all my physical media a few years ago for an Apple Music subscription my beloved Beatles have released 3 epic Super Deluxe sets which I stream all the time. What am I missing? A cardboard box and a coffee table book? No thanks. “Collectors” like those paper goods; “Listeners” just want the music.

 

Big Star at least didn’t have effective national distribution.

 

I have.

But apparently I am not the only one, because many of the stores I have bought from are still open and still appear to be doing good business, selling both CDs and vinyls.

I'm not talking about your HMVs and the like here, but "small" independent businesses, though in some cases the shops are not all that small.

 

But they still had a number one record, didn't they?

 

I wish charts had always been compiled like this. Sales are meaningless, especially after Soundscan made the industry obsessed with first-week sales at the expense of letting albums find an audience over time. Who cares how many copies something sold in the the first week? What matters is whether people are still listening to it the second week, second month, etc.

I’m not holding my breath, but I hope at some point more raw numbers are made available, especially as more listeners (supposedly) are gravitating away from the top 100. The data would be super fun to peruse.

 

I have a different perspective about the era when it was harder to find and acquire music. Starting in 1970, I have purchased over 20,000 LPs and CDs in the “harder to find music” era. I always just thought it was a royal pain in the rear end when it was difficult to find LPs and CDs I wanted. I felt zero romanticism for that. It did NOT make me appreciate the music more. It just annoyed me.

I bought a ton of jazz, blues and obscure rock, and it was in fact often difficult to obtain copies of what I wanted to hear. I hated that.

Streaming is so much nicer—I am glad I lived to experience streaming.