Encountering The Future of Streaming Music As A "Utility"

While I do use Spotify, and have had a premium account for long stretches over the years, I can't help but observe the current status of streaming media to be in need of continued revision. I think that artists could make more money, sustainably, without Spotify going belly up. There is an interesting relative lack of competition for Spotify, although Google, Apple, and Amazon also have a good stake in the race.

This seems to be aligned with Spotify simply having a better selection. Beats Music (now owned by Apple), who pays their artists slightly better, for instance, just doesn't seem to have the same appeal for labels who put out lesser known, obscure, DIY artists. For some unknown reason, experimental music seems to be submitted to Spotify more often than other services, at least for the time being. One would think that artists and labels would gravitate to streaming services that pay slightly more, but in any case, it is still a matter of peanuts.

Either way, as a listener, I can't help but to go where the action is. I don't get to sneak-listen to a walkman at work, when a blue tooth earpiece is much more easy to conceal. Many music listeners have agreed that it is impossible to buy everything that they want to hear. A person may listen to something one time, but never again. The notion of purchasing something in order to listen to it is no longer a viable selling point. As David Bowie predicted, in the future, music will be a utility expense, like "running water". So while people are continuingly (and somewhat forcibly) encountering more minimalist lifestyles, where a huge record collection is no longer tenable, it seems absolutely necessary to find a way for musicians and artists to continue to make a living, despite being less likely to sell nearly as many physical media as in the past.

All across the board, as streaming media endeavors well past the tipping point, its purveyors are continually trying to cut out the expenses of paying a musician reasonably. Even with Netflix, there is an ongoing debate about the billion dollar company providing accurate streaming data, as it relates to composers receiving royalties (rather than lump sum buyouts). What Netflix attempts to pay for the music it licenses is meager compared to the previous television and film models for royalties.

But with Spotify, this Rolling Stone article pieced together the math, claiming that only "top-tier" artists (IE. major label artists, as they have stock options) make reasonable money from streaming on Spotify. Everyone else would have to get 380,000 streams per month in order to make a month's worth of minimum wage. When the copyright board ordered streaming services to pay 44% more, Amazon and Spotify appealed, because an artist making .ooo4 cents per stream instead of .0003 cents is just too much. There are even artists sneaking protest tracks onto the platform.

For my two cents, I'm not sure why more grassroots competition isn't stepping up and flourishing. For instance, Bandcamp takes 15% of revenue from paid digital downloads and merchandise purchased through their site. Imagine if they had a monthly membership for listeners to hear music ad free, and paid their artists 85% of that? Would they implode? I doubt it. They could even keep the advertisements to music-related, possibly from only bandcamp artists, so that we don't have to hear commercials for McDonald's between songs.

I think they would corner the market, but what can I say? I'm not a business man. All I know is that something's got to give. We can't expect artists to be free content providers, and lord knows, eventually the canned, compressed pop that is usually coming out of major labels must cease to be the only sustainable option, now that people can choose not to listen to commercial radio or MTV more easily.