FEATURE:
Music Technology Breakthroughs
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Part Eleven: Digital Music Streaming
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THIS is more of a software/digital breakthrough…
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and one that might divide people. In previous features, I have talked about streaming sites and how there needs to be an overhaul of how they pay artists and how they run. I am not going to concentrate on one streaming site. Instead, I wanted to highlight the evolution of music streaming and how it has changed the industry. I am going to end with some positives, as there are a lot of problems and issues with streaming. We still buy physical music, but I think streaming and digital music offered people a world of sounds they might have not otherwise have experienced. There are issues regarding payment and how artists are compensated but, for me and so many other people, one can access so much music! It has made my listening tastes broader and more adventurous. Whilst I have an issue with how artists are paid, it would be hard to have a modern climate where there was not streaming. It seems romantic having to buy every album we want to listen to and paying for every single. I think that many people would listen to music less and discover far fewer artists if they had to pay quite a lot for every album and release. Whilst not a perfect system, streaming was a logical and necessary evolution. I want to bring in an article that charts the early days of file-sharing and music streaming:
“Before the invention of the iPod, there was the late 1980s creation of the MP3 -- “a means of compressing a sound sequence into a very small file, to enable digital storage and transmission.” And although it’s far from the only audio file format available today, its introduction prompted a larger conversation about the digital transfer and consumption of music.
That was seen as an opportunity by Shawn Fanning, John Fanning, and Sean Parker -- the people who invented Napster: “a simple, free peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing service,” and perhaps the first of its kind to have a household name, which rose to multi-million usership by 2001, the same year the iPod was unveiled. Dann Albright of MakeUseOf hypothesizes that its alignment with the market penetration of MP3 players could be a major factor contributing to Napster’s rise to fame. Plus, it was free. Apple didn’t unveil the iTunes Store until 2003, and even then, each song cost $0.99. Sure, it came with a price tag -- but it was legal”.
I want to go into more depth regarding the history and development of digital music by sourcing from MIXDOWN. Whilst the earliest streaming and file-sharing days were exciting and a real breakthrough, there were legal issues:
“Way back in 1999 when the Y2K bug had everyone gripped in a vice of fear, a peer-to-peer music sharing website by the name of Napster started gaining traction amongst American college students, who used the online service to share MP3 files of songs amongst one another for free. One of the most notable features of Napster was that it provided a platform for music lovers to not only download albums for free, but also gain access to rare live versions, alternate cuts, and demo versions of their favourite artists. While this was celebrated amongst impoverished music lovers and students alike, institutions began to take note and started blocking Napster from their online networks; however, many students found a way around this, with a reported 61% of online traffic from college servers coming directly from MP3 file sharing.
After the demise of Napster, it was evident that while free peer-to-peer music sharing was an extremely contentious practice within the music industry, online music sharing was certainly a direction worth exploring. In 2003, Apple launched the iTunes Store, an online music library to be used in conjunction with their flagship MP3 player, the futuristic (albeit antiquated by today’s standards) iPod. Users were able to download a full catalogue of music for the mere price of $0.99 per song, proving iTunes to be a viable business model and somewhat of a step forward from Napster. While online piracy services such as Frostwire and Limewire were still available to the public, you practically had to give your computer a terminal illness from all the malware and viruses on the services just to download a single Radiohead song, which led to more and more people flocking to Apple’s iTunes service.
In 2005, music streaming services were again flung to the forefront of public attention with Pandora. By fusing the streamlined interface of iTunes with related musical characteristics, Pandora created an online service which recommended new music based on a user’s listening history, allowing users to bookmark artists and discover new acts. While it certainly took a while to gain traction, Pandora influenced several modern streaming services including Spotify, and by 2013, the website had over 200 million users, demonstrating its influence to the modern world of streaming.
The mid-to-late 2000’s also saw the rapid rise and fall of MySpace, a social network which provided indie musicians with a platform to stream their music to interested users for free. While the company would soon fade to obscurity in 2009 with the rising dominance of Facebook, MySpace played a huge role in launching the careers of several UK indie acts, including Lily Allen and Arctic Monkeys. These days, MySpace has rebranded itself solely as a music streaming service, though it is somewhat overshadowed by more prominent music streaming sites. These prominent streaming services are almost impossible to avoid given their dedication to advertising, another facet of the industry that contributes to the increasing popularity of such sites”.
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Spotify is probably the most-modern and used streaming platform we have today. Launched on 23rd April, 2006, one feels that the next few years will see a new site that irons out the problems regarding payment; focuses on compensating artists and songwriters and creating this fairer platform. Whether you are pro or against streaming, as this feature explains, it offers us so much choice – that can have its negatives in addition to positives:
“Most streaming platforms offer up an astonishing library of songs, albums and playlists. All of these songs can theoretically be played by every user at one time over the internet, no matter where they are, and no matter what device they are using. From a technical standpoint, streaming works by sending (or, well, streaming) information from a server to an individual player. The actual song exists on the server as a raw file. Raw files are huge and detailed, so they have to be compressed in order to travel over the internet instantaneously. When the stream reaches your device, it will decode the compressed information using an app or plugin.
Because the raw files are compressed for transmission, some argue that music streaming is lower quality than other formats like CDs, vinyl records, or even digital downloads. This is broadly true. Spotify’s default streaming quality is 160 kbps. A regular MP3 file is normally 320 kbps (the same as Spotify’s optional “high quality streaming” setting). CDs are usually 1,411 kbps.
The success of music streaming has proven that listeners do not necessarily prize quality over quantity and convenience. The sheer number of songs available, and the ease of finding and listening to them is the real appeal. And it’s become so popular, that the whole industry has had to reorganise around it: in 2019, streaming numbers topped a trillion for the first time in history, and in March, it was estimated that 80% of revenue from recorded music was generated by streaming”.
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One can look online and discover articles that discuss the drawbacks of streaming and how it is not a perfect system. I am going to end with some positive notes. Though I understand that streaming and music-sharing is a breakthrough and huge shift from listening to music purely through physical devices, we are a few years off of seeing a balanced and ethical market. NPR highlighted issues with streaming sites in a feature from 2019:
“It's tough to recall a time when listening to music — and making it — wasn't completely synonymous with streaming. The idea of filling an iPod up with carefully selected digital files almost feels like a distant memory, though it wasn't that long ago that these kinds of players, and the digital library of songs you built through them, embodied the future of music. (For what it's worth, Apple still sells one.) These days, streaming services offer music fans a tantalizing premise: Instant, limitless access to music from all over the world and across history, for a small monthly fee. Or for free, as long as you're cool with advertisements cutting into the experience.
But beyond these contractual idiosyncrasies, the bedrock structure for streaming services' royalty payouts tilts the entire system towards those who, in some ways, need it least. Spotify and Apple Music's model for determining who gets what from their services is known as "pro rata," which means that rights-holders are paid according to market share; how their streams stack up against the most popular songs in a given time period. The people who hold the rights to the most listened-to tracks, then, stand to make the most. "The 'pro rata' model is perceived as being inherently objective and fair, however, it doesn't take into account different user behaviors," says Will Page, Spotify's Chief Economist. "Arguably, it does produce an efficient outcome in that every stream is worth the same and it is relatively cost-efficient to manage."
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As a consequence, streaming isn't just changing consumption habits, but how people write music altogether — with songs becoming shorter and shorter, for instance. The independent distributor CD Baby's DIY Musician blog suggests that if musicians want to optimize their music for the streaming age, they might want to explore changing the structure of their song to have the chorus hit listener's ears first, in the vein of Post Malone's "Better Now."
Advocates also point to Bandcamp as an alternative model that's beloved by the people who use it. On it, artists and their labels can directly upload their songs, and fans directly support artists they love, follow their work, and post gushing odes about their favorite tracks. Unlike Spotify and Apple Music, the service not only enables listeners to stream songs, but also allows both artists to set the price for their work and listeners to name a price to own the songs. It has an editorial arm, Bandcamp Daily, where music fanatics dish about under-the-radar artists and scenes (on Bandcamp) flourishing around the world, and newsletters that keep you abreast about what your favorite label's just released, and digital tracks and vinyl records that your friends have been into lately.
IMAGE CREDIT: Bandcamp
Compared to a behemoth like Spotify, Bandcamp is not unlike a city's independent record store compared to a Best Buy (at least, back when it even stocked music) — a place that attracts a more engaged listener. "I think if you're a fan, knowing that your money is going directly to the artist and supporting them, there's something really awesome about that, and that's probably what inspires people to pay more for something online," says Garcia. But realistically, Bandcamp doesn't do the numbers that Spotify does, in both subscribers and revenue. "Bandcamp, you can see each and every single penny where it came from and where it went," Krukowski says. "So financially there's absolutely no mystery at all. Of course, the numbers are radically different. Spotify at this point is an important part of our music income, and Bandcamp is not yet”.
Compared to the other musical breakthroughs I have covered, there are more problems and arguments associated with streaming. Starting off with relatively simple file-sharing way back, we now have sites like TIDAL and Spotify that offers anyone a huge library of music. I think that the format will improve through the years and problems that exist now will be addressed asnd rectified – including charging everyone who wants to stream music; ensuring that more money is given to artists and songwriters. The reason I wanted to highlight music streaming is because I have not only discovered many new artists through this method, but I have also connected with a lot of older music. I do like buying physical music but, as that can be expensive if you are a major music fan, streaming allows us all to expand our horizons. It is very convenient and accessible. Whilst it will never replace physical music completely, it is clear there is a demand for digital platforms and digesting music this way. Whether you love it or hate it, streaming and digital music has transformed the industry and out listening habits. If the platform bosses can act regarding their payment structures and address concerns that have been raging for years, then I think there will be less scrutiny and criticism around. For the sake of artists, songwriters and music lovers everyone, let us hope that they...
GET there sooner rather than later!