Music Streaming Sales Outstrip Digital Downloads For First Time (thestack.com) 74
An anonymous reader writes with this news, which might worry you if you'd like your music (or videos, or books) to be safely stored on your local PC, phone, or offline storage: Music streaming has surpassed digital downloads in terms of revenue, according to a report released by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Its 'News and Notes on 2015' review shows that music streaming in the U.S. brought in 34.3% of the overall revenue for the year – generating $2.4 billion out of a total $7 billion. If the numbers are accurate, streaming beat music downloads by 0.3%. While this growth is an encouraging result for those in the industry backing streaming services like Spotify and the new Apple Music, many remain unconvinced of its value. RIAA chairman and CEO Cary Sherman noted an 'alarming' disparity between the growth in the number of ad-supported streams, and the growth in revenues generated by these.
Re:All your music... (Score:5, Insightful)
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$13 a month and I dont use all my phone data..... Sirius XM also works where cellphones dont.
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Wow - how do you listen when you're out of cellular and wifi range?
Oh, you don't? Your solution won't work for me then. Not to mention that the average CD has maybe one or two hits on it at most - Supergroups who produce 5-8 hits per album are relatively rare, at least in my collection. So assuming your music library had around 500 or so decent songs you'd listen to and probably closer to 300.... I laugh at that. My digital collection is about 2500 songs and I consider myself to have a tiny collection.
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Re: All your music... (Score:1)
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And conversely, I keep $120 per year in my pocket by not paying to listen to stuff that I already own, or wasting time listening to "new releases" because they're all crap anyway.
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Drop recordings - throw them away. Support the artist directly via live performance. Consumption of recorded music only supp
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Drop recordings - throw them away. Support the artist directly via live performance.
Very convenient. I just fancy listening to some music, and I must somehow find out where live music is being performed at that moment, then get the car out and drive somewhere miles away to do so.
Re:All your music... (Score:5, Funny)
I just call up Aerosmith and have them come over and play for me in the living room.
I wont listen to Metallica anymore after what Lars did to the carpet last time....
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Wait, you live in L.A. or New York, right?
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Re:All your music... (Score:5, Interesting)
I disagree.
Not only do I not have a nearby place with live music, let alone playing the kind of music I want ... I want to be able to listen to music while I work, while I'm on a plane, while I'm on vacation, while I'm in my backyard while in my car, or hanging out with friends in my living room.
I also want a large amount of variety in my music, and have little interest in going to a live venue where I get gouged for cover, over-priced drinks, and leave with ringing ears. And, no, I don't want to hear yet another damned version of Mustang Sally by a cover band. I want to listen to music FAR more often than that, and I sure don't want whatever pop tune is going to play 10 times that day.
Why was the concept of owning music farcical? We had it for a VERY long time as a model, and for some of us it still works quite well.
Artists get paid far better from a CD purchase than a streaming play, and I have no fucking interest in having ads shoved in my face so some asshole can track me and try to monetize my listening experience.
Me, I buy CDs, rip 'em to MP3, and use them on all of my devices how I see fit, where I see fit, and when I see fit. Two or three times a year I buy 20-30 CDs (more if you account for multi-disk sets), rip 'em, put in my library and as much as possible try to play through my entire library through the year -- because I have big giant random playlists based on least recently played.
No ad company gets money when I play my music, no asshole can tell me the DRM has expired and I'm not allowed to listen to it, no analytics company can gather information about me when I play music, and I'm not dependent on an internet connection to re-download something I already own.
As far as I'm concerned, the only way to avoid the corruption of the music industry is buy CDs from artists I like, or buy compilation CDs I like, let them get paid, and then never have them have any inputs on how I use my music ever again.
Sorry, for me buying a CD and ripping it to MP3 is pretty much the only way I can freely enjoy my music in the way I choose to listen to it without allowing someone to try to apply constraints or make more money off the purchase. It's a one shot deal, and then the recording industry is out of the picture ... and I'm not supporting artists I don't like.
No way I'm willing to hand control of how I play my music to anybody else, and no way I'm going to rely on the radio or live venues to provide all of the music and variety I choose. I'll take care of that myself, precisely by owning my own music library.
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The best thing about the new model of music distribution is that the really good live performers get the greater reward, vs just studio production music. Nothing wrong with the latter, but good live entertainment talent is something special.
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Me, I buy CDs, rip 'em to MP3, and use them on all of my devices how I see fit, where I see fit, and when I see fit.
Except for MP3, I agree with everything you said. I rip mine to lossless (started with MonkeyAudio -> FLAC -> AAC) and the beauty of lossless is you can convert to anything else however many times you want or need to as times change. Also, with today's storage devices, I can carry days worth of music anywhere I go. I have about 1000 CDs worth of music ripped, archived, and stored, and no, Mustang Sally in any form is not in the list. I should also note that at least 2 of my early CDs have succumbed to
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Me, I buy CDs, rip 'em to MP3, and use them on all of my devices how I see fit, where I see fit, and when I see fit.
Unless you're buying multiple copies, you do realize what you're doing is copyright infringement, right? You are allowed to make _one_ copy for backup purposes. You can make an argument that you're space shifting a CD, but that means you can only have it on one device at a time, certainly not all of them!
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Cox internet went down in our neighborhood for 10 hours last week.
It was a little weird at first, you don't know how dependent you are on a live connection, and I pondered life without the interwebs for awhile.
Then I looked at my 2000 CDs and 700 LPs and 1000 printed books 10 guitars and shrugged.
When the gamma ray burst takes out the power, come on over, bring beer, and we'll have a party.
Streaming is a scam.
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But what if there aren't any local artists playing the kind of music I like? They've basically been selling recorded music since they figured out how to record sound. Recorded music does have it's place. There are albums that I have bought that I've definitely got my money out of. Concert tickets don't really allow everybody to really see the concert anyway. A musician can only spend a finite amount of time touring, and can only do a finite amount of shows. You can't afford to go to a show for every
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Well, that and sometimes artists die and stuff ... I'm sure all those fans of Hendrix or Nirvana (or countless other artists) are just refusing to listen to that because they can't get tickets to a live show.
A band playing near you, playing stuff you give a crap about, and doing it in a way you can afford to keep doing? Yeah, right.
By all means, support live music if you like ... but don't for a minute think it can substitute for a personal collection of music. It's not the same thing.
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Wrong on so many things: artists who don't perform live, artists who can't perform live (dead, wrong location), back catalogue, artists who aren't 'signed', artists who choose not to be on streaming services. The list goes on.
Drop recordings? You understand that a lot of live music actually uses elements of recordings? Of course you do...
Only support Industrial music? You mean like Skinny Puppy, NIN, Ministry? That I'd agree with.
Re: All your music... (Score:1)
What about analog downloads? (Score:4, Funny)
They have a warmer sound!
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And yet it still doesn't sound quite as stupid as "digital downloads."
I prefer to download the music I buy (Score:4, Interesting)
So I have it whenever and wherever I want
Music is something you listen to many times, it is inefficient to stream it every time (especially if you're outside your Wifi and would have to pay your mobile carrier for extra data use.
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It's different because you can only play the downloaded tracks through their app. I'm pretty sure that the app keeps track of the play count and reports back to the mother ship when it reconnects to the internet.
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Because they don't get "little or nothing". Streaming services now account for over 30% of US music revenue, which is more than that of digital downloads (i.e. the reason this story got posted in the first place) but also more than the sales of physical CDs. How much of this money actually reaches the musicians and how much is eaten up by service providers and labels is of course another issue, but I bet they don't get the lion share of each sold CD either.
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Because they don't get "little or nothing". Streaming services now account for over 30% of US music revenue, which is more than that of digital downloads (i.e. the reason this story got posted in the first place) but also more than the sales of physical CDs. How much of this money actually reaches the musicians and how much is eaten up by service providers and labels is of course another issue, but I bet they don't get the lion share of each sold CD either.
If you buy, either a digital download or CD, directly from the artist's website or via a service such as bandcamp then the artist gets a large proportion of the price paid.
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The biggest "artists" right now are Adele, Taylor Swift, One Direction, Drake.
I've heard of 3 of them, and can say I'm only familiar with any songs from one of them. It might be time to accept the fact that I'm out of touch with the popular music crowd.
This makes me happy.
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I've got you beat. I've only heard of two. Though I might have accidentally seen Taylor Swift before a movie once. Unless that was some other blonde. Wait, why do I think Taylor Swift is a blonde? How would I know that? Regardless, I think I'm still out-old-fogeying you, a little.
More on topic, I do like streaming services, mostly to plug in bands I already like and then discover ones I didn't know. Usually I'm discovering songs that aren't "new" -- often they're a decade or more old -- but they're new to m
"[Blank] as a Service" (i.e. the Rentier Economy) (Score:5, Insightful)
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Some of my most heavily played tracks are from CDs I bought 25 years ago. I can listen to that same music for the next 25 years without paying anyone another damn penny.
So tell me again how software 'good enough for a decade' is worth buying while music I might enjoy for 50 years isn't.
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Absolutely, some of the older stuff sticks with you forever. On the other hand, looking at my CD collection mostly amassed during the 90's, I'd say half or more could have been a rental. Having both options available is probably better than having only one choice.
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Who cares? We get access to the same stuff cheaper, and use the savings to access more stuff the rich used to have all to themselves. Your philosophical bullshit doesn't hold up much when food was 30% of the household income in 1950 and is 11% now, while cell phones went from $4,000 and $50/month plus 40 cents/minute in 1983 to $350 smart phone and $60 unlimited voice and data. By the way, that cell phone would be over $9,000 today, and you'd pay $550/month to talk for 2 hours per week.
Streaming encourages exploration (Score:2)
The cost of discovering new content is much lower for streaming services compared to pay to own.
Spotify costs me the same per month no matter how many tracks from how many artists I listen to. The service encourages me to try new things and they also curate playlists like New Music Friday and Discover Weekly. With pay to own I have to buy the entire album whether I end up listening to one track once, or all of the tracks many times.
There's also the convenience factor of streaming services. I did rip my
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Here in the UK Spotify costs £9.99 a month which is a whole 16p more than Adele's 25 on CD brand new (just to keep it lined up with comments at the top) which is apparently according to Amazon the number one seller in Popular Music.
If you are willing to buy second hand older stuff is often *MUCH* cheaper, frequently £0.01 plus £1.26 delivery. For example Adel 19 is £4.96 delivered new, One Directions Up All Night is £1.51 delivered. Though music th
Big difference (Score:2)
With these music and movie streaming services, it's like paying someone $x/mo so you can live in any apartment or drive any car. Use the same one all month, or change to a different apartment/car each day if you want. Even the new model that just completed construction and became available yesterday.
Heck, if there were a similar service for cars, I daresay
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That's already what you can do with Zipcar if you're in their service area, except for the part about using it for a solo daily commute which is completely infeasible. (Of course, the pricing issues there are not entirely disconnected from the terrible economic inefficiency of leaving a vehicle parked at one's workplace for 8+ hours, but North American regional planning on the whole has had little to do with generating economic efficiency, especially since the FDR era in the case of the US.)
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Curious about record contracts (Score:2)
I'm curious... do record contracts still include clauses requiring the artists to pay for "breakage?" Or, do they now scam artists into paying for "lost packets?"
The market adjusted (Score:2, Interesting)
The music industry has carefully tried to redefine digital downloads as different from purchases, pushing DRM which is later sunset and stripping us of our first-sale rights with the approval of the courts. Everyone knows that a CD which I can rip, trade or later sell legally is worth more than a digital download which I never really own, but rather license. So, the market adjusted. Streaming is clearly cheaper than amassing an aging collection of purchased music. The digital "licensed" albums were never th
An "alarming" disparity? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, Mr. Sherman, what you are seeing is the competition that results from customers having more choice about formats and having a relatively large number of competing services trying to win customers driving prices down instead of a handful of companies essentially operating a price-fixing cartel and relying on customer lock-in. That you think this is a problem speaks volumes.
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...the competition that results from customers having more choice about formats and having a relatively large number of competing services trying to win customers driving prices down instead of a handful of companies essentially operating a price-fixing cartel and relying on customer lock-in.
TLDR: capitalism
That you think this is a problem speaks volumes.
This is true, will be interesting to see if they try to crack down on these "somethingorother" services that are destroying the quality music industry! Or something.
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Sigh. (Score:2)
"RIAA chairman and CEO Cary Sherman noted an 'alarming' disparity between the growth in the number of ad-supported streams, and the growth in revenues generated by these."
Genius-fecking-salesman in charge of an entire industry organisation doesn't understand that just showing a company's advert 100 times to the same viewer instead of just once doesn't automatically mean they'll pay 100 times more to run the ad.
Anything "ad-supported" is doomed to die the second people get used to the ads, or get bothered by