Over the past decade we have seen
music streaming services in the industry rise tremendously. The idea of music
streaming services is to bring you millions of songs, of all genres, for
whatever situation you land yourself in. Streaming services have forced big
players like iTunes to follow in their path or unfortunately get left behind.
Streaming websites argue they are contributing positively to the industry with
the underlying fact that music seems to be growing again. But like anything
else in this world where there is ups, unfortunately, there must be downs and
for streaming websites this has certainly been the case, especially over the
last couple of year.
Music streaming sites in general
all operate in similar ways. The majority allows consumers to use their service
for free, with the downside of having to listen to advertising in between
songs, but also have a paid version of the service, where you pay a set price
per month or year, and draw in little to no interruption. Streaming services,
in short, have banks of music from a wide range of artists and genres where
customers are usually allowed to customize their own profiles with any music
they choose, create playlists of their own and use the services radio setting
where they curate songs for you. Before music streaming services started
booming, paying a set price for a single song on iTunes and uploading it on
your device seemed to be the most traveled path. In today’s age it is clear
that streaming services are taking over, from movies to music, streaming seems
to be the most efficient way of operating.
There are many streaming services to choose from in our day and age,
such as, Pandora, Google Music, Amazon Prime Music, Apple Music, etc. But I
want to focus on the player that has impacted the industry the most, or so it
seems, Spotify.
Spotify, founded by Daniel Ek and
Martin Lorentzon, launched in 2008 in hopes of changing the way we listen to
music forever. Along with most streaming services, Spotify allows you to search
any artist, track, album, genre or playlist to find exactly what you’re looking
for. Spotify also allows you to “follow” your friends and artists in the
industry to see what they’re listening to. Spotify partnered up with Facebook
where users with Spotify accounts could choose an option where the recent songs
they listened to would pop up on their Facebook profile. In my opinion this was
Spotify’s best decision as far as growing their service. Today, Spotify has
1,500 employees, 75+ millions users, music available in 50+ languages and is
available in an application form on almost every platform.
I have been actively listening to
music for the majority of my life. Starting with CD’s in my Walkman, moving up
to the iPod a couple years later and then eventually to the iPhone. I always
had to buy or download music onto my iTunes account and then upload the songs I
purchased to my device. This process never seemed like a big deal to me until
streaming services came alive as our technology continued to advance. It has
been years since I have purchased a song on iTunes and uploaded it to my phone.
Today I use a couple of different streaming services, Spotify being one of
them, where I have the application on both my computer and phone so I am never
with out my music. The reason I can do this is because we have Internet or
Wi-Fi just about everywhere now. The rise of the Internet was the sole
contributor to streaming services being able to function.
Spotify wasn’t the first player in
the streaming service game but definitely came in prepared with the mindset to
grow very large with their innovative ideas. Today I would say Spotify is
definitely at the top of the music-streaming world but should be on the lookout
with Apple Music entering the game a little under a year ago. There’s plenty of
glory that comes with being the top music streaming service in the world but
Spotify has also received a very large amount of backlash from both artists and
consumers (who back artist claims). Unlike physical download or purchasing
sites like iTunes where artists receive a set pay per purchase, Spotify pays
its artists based on the number of streams their songs received in relation to
the rest of the songs streamed on their site. As you might have guessed, the
majority of backlash has stemmed from artists not being compensated fairly for
their work. Big artists such as Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Taylor Swift were
notably the most infamous for taking music content off of Spotify’s service for
their stance on being unfairly compensated. Taylor Swift took a hard, and very
public, stance against Spotify where she thought her life’s work was worth more
than she was getting from the service. Her actions sparked the debate across
the industry and social media where other artists questioned the same.
For me, it seems issues like these
are always brought to attention when times are changing, moving from one way of
doing things to another. That may seem obvious because no precedent has been
set, but many aren’t able to see this when it comes to life right in front of their
face. I completely understand where artist’s like Swift are coming from on this
subject, she has dedicated her life to making music for everyone to enjoy and
who is Spotify to say what that is worth? On the other hand, I think Spotify
makes a good point that streaming services are substantially growing the music
industry. As of recent, artists can go gold, platinum, etc. from the amount of
streams they receive online versus how many copies of their album is sold.
Spotify also makes a very valid point that they are reducing the amount of
piracy that was previously going on by making music free for consumers to
stream. As a result of this, artists can make some money off of their streams
versus making zero money off of their music being pirated.
All in all, I think this goes back
to my point of changing times and setting precedent. In my opinion, as
technology continues to advance in the next couple of years, streaming services
like this will be used by the majority of music listeners. Although competition
is ramping up, I continue to see Spotify at the top of the music streaming industry
in the coming years solely because they have continued to innovate and partner
with the right people thus far.
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