Music consumption began in 1877 with Thomas Edison’s invention of the Phonograph. Using a stylus or needle to follow a groove on a rotating disc, using vibrations to produce the sound. However, the sound quality wasn’t great and each record only lasted for one play through. In 1896 the Gramophone, created by Emile Berliner, was the first device able to play a disc of recorded music, making recorded music accessible to the public. 1903 saw Phillips introduce the cassette. The cassette was able to come in two forms, the first with pre recorded music and the second blank and being able to record what the user wanted. 1954 was when the first transistor radio was created by Texas Instruments. This small portable radio receiver allowed people to listen to music anywhere, becoming the most popular electronic communications device in history. Vinyls became popular in 1975, with the production of the 30cm disc rotating at 45rpm. Sony released the Walkman in 1979, becoming the first personal portable cassette player, selling over 400 million worldwide. The compact disc(CD) was introduced in 1982, the fist CD being released in October of Billy Joel’s 52nd Street. 1999 saw the MP3 format created to the chagrin of Brandenburg who said, “Do you know that this will destroy the industry?” That same year Napster became the first peer to peer music sharing platform. By February 2001, 25 million people were using Napster, however, this platform only lasted two years before being over run with lawsuits and having to shut down (thanks to Metallica and Dr.Dre). This introduced the world to the streaming platform, and changed music consumption forever.
Since then, services like Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music have become second nature to the everyday music listener, but in the past decade, streaming has not only domineered music consumption but the entire business side of the music industry. Streaming culture has skyrocketed the accessibility of music by allowing consumers to listen to practically any song or album at the touch of a button. 89% of individuals ages 16 to 64 listen to music on a streaming platform, per the 2019 Music Listening report from International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or IFPI. Furthermore, 52% of individuals ages 16 to 24 have used streaming services in the past month, according to the report. According to the Recording Industry of America, the number of paid music subscriptions in the U.S. exceeded 60 million in the first half of 2019. As of July 2019, Spotify globally had a whopping 232 million users overall, with 108 million of those being paying users. In June, Apple Music globally had a total of 60 million users. With millions using these streaming services, artists and bands have been able to quickly cross borders and reach listeners in ways that were unheard of pre-streaming. Streaming has dominated music sales in the past five or so years. Overall, the global music industry brought in $19.1 billion in 2018, according to the 2019 Global Music Report from IFPI. Digital revenues increased 21.1% in 2018 to an overall $11.2 billion. Overall revenues are broken down into physical, digital (excluding streaming), streaming, performance and synchronization rights. Streaming dominates the categories at $8.9 billion, with physical revenues following at $4.7 billion. At the top of the totem pole, Ed Sheeran’s “Shape Of You” sits as the most streamed song on Spotify with roughly 2.3 billion plays. Coming in second is Drake’s 2016 hit “One Dance” with roughly 1.7 billion streams.
Since its inception on April 23, 2006, Spotify has become the leading force in music streaming, and the predominant way to consume music. Spotify playlists have become the way for artists to break songs, the right playlist placement can propel a song and an artist to astronomical heights. For a new artist, being featured on any playlist is an accomplishment, but being featured on Spotify curated playlists can increase your streams substantially, and put you on the radar of some of the music industries’ elite. Playlists such as Rap Caviar, Are & Be, The Newness or the discover playlist can now be considered the gatekeepers to the music industry. Along with these (and a variety of other) major playlists (mostly curated by Spotify) there are a wide variety of smaller playlists curated by subscribers. These playlists often are used for the promotion of new independent artists. Most of these playlists pick and chooses songs from independent artists that submit their songs to the curators of these playlists. From experience, it is as simple as contacting the curator (by either finding their email or social media accounts) and asking to submit a song. Some of these curators will ask for money and present you with packages for placements and positioning, others will feature your song because they like it. For placement on the larger playlists (both curated by Spotify or sponsored by Spotify but ran by an independent person) you either have to be an established act, have a connection at the playlist, be picked up independently because your song has created a buzz, or you can pay a few thousands of dollars for a placement (generally very low on the playlist).
Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Google Play and Amazon Music, allow artists to create free accounts and upload your music for free. Allowing artists to reach millions of users with a few simple steps, and the touch of a few buttons, these streaming platforms are making it easier than ever to release music. Every day about 40,000 songs are released, this flooding of music has over saturated the market making almost impossible to listen to everything. On the flip side, this influx of new music being released has given artists an opportunity to be noticed by people who would have never had a chance to hear them before. Before the days of streaming an up and coming artist in New York wouldn’t be able to reach an audience in Florida or Texas unless the had the means to travel there. With the invention of streaming artists from all over the world can reach any audience in any country just by simply up loading their music to one or more of these platforms.
There is a downside to the rise of the streaming services. When artists relied on physical sales, generally the split between the artist and the label favors the label, but the artist was able to make more money than in the streaming era. As it pertains to streaming, artists will make $0.0032 on Spotify, $0.0056 on Apple Music, $0.0055 on Google Play, $0.0119 on Amazon, and $0.0099 on Tidal per stream. It takes around 1,100 streams of a song to equal one physical sale. For independent artists, these splits make it almost impossible to make significant money through streaming, even if you are on multiple platforms. This is why in most cases artists spend most of their time focused on touring and merchandise, because this is where a majority of their money is made.
The streaming platforms have incentivized artists (both new and established) to create music and albums in a different way. When artists were releasing physical copies of their albums, most albums were 10 songs, 12 if you were pushing the data limit of the CD. Anything more than that was released as a double disc (remember the Eminem lyric, “You couldn’t sell two copies if you pressed a double album.”) Songs ranged in time limits anywhere from two minutes up to as much 10 minutes. Now, with the invention of streaming, and the fact that being playlisted has become the main focus, songs are becoming shorter and albums are becoming longer. Due in part to the lessening attention span of the youth and general public (thank you technology) songs have become an average of around two and a half minutes in length. Anything longer than that (unless your an established artist who is known for longer songs, think Joe Budden and his normal five minute song, however still in some cases this is true for established acts as well) and the audience will skip the song, or not listen to the whole thing (generally skipping the third verse or bridge or final hook or double hook). These shorter songs have become the normal, not only because of the lack of attention spans, but because it works better for streaming purposes. Artists are now worried about getting the most streams and being on top of the most playlists, they do this by having songs that people will stream and put in their own playlists (personal ones not necessarily curated ones for the public) more times than another artist or song. The shorter the song, the more times it can be streamed by more people because by the time it’s over, you want to hear it again. The same thinking goes for albums but from a different perspective. Artists are now (at least in some cases) releasing longer albums (20 or more songs) or double and triple albums and a deluxe version of the same album with more and/or different songs. These longer albums (which are a pain to listen to, it took me three days to get through Chris Brown’s last 45 song album) give the artist more opportunities to be featured on playlists. The more songs, the broader the audience range (as people can pick and choose which songs they like and play those and not the whole album) and the more streamable songs. Whether this is good or bad (I choose bad, because as someone who enjoys listening to new music and full albums in their entirety front to back, it’s hard to listen to one 45 song album, let alone three that came out the same day, or even more when Rae Sremmurd released a triple album, or when Chris Brown released the deluxe version with 30 new songs that weren’t featured on the 45 song album) the fact the artists we love are continually creating music (even if it is a lot) is never something we can get mad at.
The rise of the digital streaming platforms has been a gift and curse. Gift, because it has allowed independent artists an avenue to easily release their music and reach an audience that before the inception of the streaming platforms would have been impossible to reach. Curse, because so many songs are released everyday. With thousands of songs released everyday, and a majority of those songs being from new artists, it is hard to sift through all the new music and discover new artists. Playlists have made this process easier, but still most of us using these streaming platforms are creating our own playlists with the songs we know and love, very rarely adding new songs to the playlist unless they come from our favorite artists new release. You have to make it a point to listen and discover new acts today, and unless as a new act your able to differentiate yourself from the other music that is released at the same time (most of which does sound the same, the same type of beat, with the same flow and rhyme pattern, with the same lyrics) your music maybe missed or over looked.
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