Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Music

Music Streaming May Actually be Falling Because of Coronavirus (qz.com) 50

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The isolation caused by the spread of coronavirus means people are sitting inside all day streaming music, right? Actually, maybe not. At least for the most popular songs, people in some highly affected countries are streaming far fewer songs during the pandemic than before. From a report: In Italy, one of the countries hardest hit by coronavirus, the top 200 most streamed songs on Spotify within the country averaged 18.3 million total streams per day in February 2019. Since Italy's prime minister announced a national quarantine on March 9th, the total streams for the 200 most popular songs have not topped 14.4 million. There was a 23% drop in top 200 streams on Tuesday March 17th compared to Tuesday, March 3rd.

[...] The trend is similar in the US. On March 17th, total Spotify streams of top 200 songs fell to 77 million streams. This was the lowest number of top-200 streams in the US for any Tuesday in 2020, and about 14 million streams fewer than just a week before. Total top-200 streams are also down in the UK, France, and Spain as well.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Music Streaming May Actually be Falling Because of Coronavirus More

Music Streaming May Actually be Falling Because of Coronavirus

Comments Filter:

  • People are watching videos instead (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PeeAitchPee ( 712652 ) on Friday March 20, 2020 @01:03PM (#59853578)
    When people are actually working, they're likely streaming music in the background and not videos. Now that they aren't being allowed to work, they're likely watching videos etc. to pass the time. Should be easy to correlate with video streaming services.

    • Re:People are watching videos instead (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Friday March 20, 2020 @01:08PM (#59853616) Homepage Journal
      I was thinking along the same lines as you, that previous to the virus, folks just had it streaming in the background, likely not listening that closely.

      Maybe now...they're actually listening and hearing how bad most popular music is...lack of dynamics, lack of more complex melody, the over compression, and general lack of talent by artists, and seeing it is just the same repackaged crap over and over spewed forth by over-engineered formulaic music industry "experts".

      • Wait are you saying I can't just loop samples of a dozen actual artists and get rich from my fire beats which I set them to?

      • Maybe now...they're actually listening and hearing how bad most popular music is...lack of dynamics, ...

        Lack of dynamics in pop has a long history, going back at least as far as AM radio.

        AM radio had a limit on how loud the modulation could be (100% modulation - overmodulation caused both distortion and radiated signals illegally outside the assigned channel. It also had no protection against radio noise - which added in to the received signal - so the stronger the modulation, the better the signal-to-nois

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DewDude ( 537374 )
      There's also the loss of the need to have music while commuting or working out. Since the days of the walkman music has turned in to a thing we have when we're doing our daily rituals; much to the degree it's become ingrained. Very few people specifically sit down and just listen to music. Since people aren't commuting, or going about daily life; music is a non-issue to them. Even I admit I have things set-up that my hi-fi listening revolves around a PC setup.

    • Totally agree with everything you are saying - Audio out, video in.

      There's one other factor - with more people at home they may not agree on what to listen to. I was working at home and sometimes listen to music while I work, but my wife has shifted to working at home full time also so less audio use (I don't like wearing headphones or earbuds the whole day it curtails my listening to music).

    • Because I'm home, I'm playing the files directly off my home library. No need to stream, this is where my music ACTUALLY is. (Well, kinda—I'm actually redownloading all my music that I uploaded to iCloud with iTunes match because I lost the drive where my music was stored. But I download it before I play it, so it's still not streaming.)

    • When people are actually working, they're likely streaming music in the background they're likely streaming music in the background"

      Missing word.

      When people are actually working OUT, they're likely streaming music in the background!

      All the Gyms are closed in Europe.

    • Moreso, when people are working they drive in cars and listen to music from the radio... no radio time or all-news listening means no music discovery.

    • Could also be not having to work in an open plan office. A lot of people in there wearing headphones or earbuds all day due to the constant noise and distractions. Many just want some peace and quiet so they can concentrate, but piping in some music helps with covering up the background drone. I know wearing headphones and earbuds aren't comfortable for 8-9 hours, but it's what you've got to do.

      Though judging by how productive some people seem to be at home, I'm sure streaming video use is way up and str

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fintux ( 798480 )
        For me the reason is exactly this: in the office, the music is necessary to block the noise, and also to fend of some potential distractions (people will rather go chat with somebody without headphones).

    • It's not just that - it's about working from home. In an office, you can only really get away with listening to music on headphones whilst working.

      Working from home, it's a lot easier to have a TV on in the background.

  • That will free up more valuable internet bandwidth?

  • maybe that industrially made crap gets boring fast. you gotta produce moar!

    not that the rest of spotify's offer is too sophisticated anyway, last i checked.

  • Streaming numbers got de-inflated (Score:3)

    by damaki ( 997243 ) on Friday March 20, 2020 @01:05PM (#59853596)
    It is a well known fact that most streaming numbers are artificially inflated by usage of streaming farms, in Asia and Oceania. Let's imagine for a moment that a virus makes it so that these streaming farms are closed. Thus falling numbers.

  • Maybe they don't need to stream (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Friday March 20, 2020 @01:07PM (#59853610)

    since they are stuck at home where all their media is already?

    • Came here to say that. When I'm at home, I have a massive mp3 collection and a metric ton of movies on a Plex server. It's all local.

      And actually, I have a large CD collection, so a large number of my mp3s are legit. Movies? Not so much. Though, I have bought a lot of movies over the years.

      • Does I sold my DVD collection after copying it to plex because it took up too much room count as legit?

      • I hear people saying :) the volume of books appearing on Usenet has dwindled to a trickle.

        • I hear people saying :) the volume of books appearing on Usenet has dwindled to a trickle.

          LOL@Volume of books....

          Maybe there isn't anything new worth reading today?

          • Doesn't stop Harlequin Romances from selling. The adage "90% of everything is crap, but everyone has a different opinion what falls in that 90%" applies to books too.
  • Perhaps for them it's not the time to listen to music?

    • I think this is a major factor.

      My wife is a Kindle junkie and she's not in the mood to read. She's distracted by concern.

  • Well yeah (Score:4, Funny)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday March 20, 2020 @01:28PM (#59853708)

    It's hard to hear music when you're on a damn ventilator.

  • Choose not to make it your problem. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Friday March 20, 2020 @02:02PM (#59853816)

    Use your bandwidth for education instead.

    Choose to be entertained by information and knowledge. Choose to relinquish the pop "culture" pacifiers proffered you and improve your mind instead.

    Part of mental liberation is relinquishing garbage and ceasing to want it. Be a serious person, all the time. Serious doesn't mean "grim", it's quite the opposite! It means not shitting into your own mind. Slashdot was once News for Nerds. Do nerd things and leave streaming services to plebs unequipped to think. They need it but you don't.

  • I don't know how widespread the practice is, but at my very large company streaming has been blocked temporarily to reduce bandwidth usage since so many people are working remotely over VPN.
  • With all the open office setups, people just put on their headphones. Maybe they don't need to do than when they're at home, in their own office.
  • I'm stuck on video conferences all day now. Besides not wanting the background noise, am making sure I've got enough bandwidth for the audio I need to work from home.

  • Fuck streaming. (Score:3)

    by pecosdave ( 536896 ) on Friday March 20, 2020 @02:57PM (#59854016) Homepage Journal

    I bought 3 CDs in the past two weeks, I've ripped, compressed, and stored them. If bandwidth fails I still have my music, and considering how cheap CDs are it's not really what you would call a "limited" selection - as long as you like my kind of music and don't give a crap about shitty music.

    Streaming music is for people who want to pass off the responsibility of transporting their stuff to them to a third party.

    • Streaming music is for people who want to pass off the responsibility of transporting their stuff to them to a third party.

      Also: "Uh, how does this plug in? Which end is up? What do I click on to get the songs from the disk onto the thing?"

      When people carried around portable CD players it was simpler. You push the big mechanical thing until the lid opens, you put the disk in, you press it closed, and then you press the largest button that it is in a row of control buttons. Easy, and more importantly, no reading or technical understanding is required.

      They don't usually even understand the difference beyond, "this one you click o

      • > Stupid people that have wisdom This used to be me. Now I'm an intelligent fool.

      • You know, it's been a while since I used Apple anything (that still had an Apple OS anyways). I tend to recall iTunes simply being shove in a disk and hit save or something simple like that. I recall there being stuff on Windows that was just as easy. I've even had plugins on KDE that let me "explore" the CD and just drag and drop the songs from the folder as whichever format I browsed into, the rip/compress was done when you dragged and dropped.

        When I first started my I.T. career in the late 90's there

        • Sure, in Linux by 2000 you could insert a CD and it would open a player. The problem is, copying the files to a portable device requires the step, "open a file manager and drag the files to the icon for the portable device." It isn't hard, but it requires knowledge. It is discoverable, but only if you're exploring.

          Even in ~ 2001 it was common in Linux that inserting a CD would launch a CD importing tool. But you have to be interested in using a computer, most users just want to use a stereo like before; the

    • So you have 45 songs in your library? You have a long way to catch up to the 35 million in mine via a streaming service.

      For me, streaming music is about not paying $1 per song, but rather paying $10/month for music which I in the most literal sense could listen to 24/7 every day of the year for nearly 4 years and never hear the same song twice.

      • For ten bucks a month I can buy ten entire used albums that sound as good as ones pressed yesterday, keep them for my life and the life of my descendants and they continue to work even if the government goes into full authoritarian net-nazi mode. No Internet for you!

      • Also, per PowerAmp I have 4,732 songs. Realistically if I made a Playlist of what I wanted to hear with my collection and did the same with your streaming I would be listening to about the same number of the same songs.

        Granted I come up a little short sometimes, had to buy some Elvis, some Fleetwood Mac, and some Foriegner I was missing recently, but what was used was cheap and what was new was from Amazon with "auto-rip" (cheaper with the disk) so I'm building my streaming option also, despite rarely usin

  • It will be months or years before the true extent of the coverup is known.

    Why do you think there is so little traffic on the road?

    The dead don't drive.

  • Not really a big surprise... streaming music, at least for myself and those I know, is something used far more away from home than at home. I rarely stream music while home; I frequently stream music while driving, riding my bike, working out, hiking, etc.

  • A lot of people stream music during their commutes. Less commuting time, less streaming.

Slashdot Top Deals

Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only specification is that it should run noiselessly.

Close