Is streaming technology saving the music industry?

[Dmitry]

1 hour ago, Scott Dolan said:

I don't understand your question, but no it isn't always free. I think most who use it only USE the free service, but I can't say for sure. I can count on one hand the number of times I've used a streaming service. 

Even though I gave up on physical media many years ago, I still prefer buying albums rather than listening to them on a streaming service. 

You wrote that they don't buy music in any format, just stream it. Streaming audio is emitted in several formats.

[Scott Dolan]

Sure it is. But what I meant was they're not "buying" music. So they're not using iTunes, for example, to buy songs/albums. 

Even if they pay for upgraded streaming, I still don't consider that as buying music. They're simply paying for the privilege to access a large library of music. 

[rostasi]

1 hour ago, Dmitry said:

You make cds for restaurant play? You bring them with you when you go out to eat, or they already know what to play when you walk through the door?

It depended on the various situations, but it usually resulted in them asking me to provide music for them -
either in full or partial - after word got out or after I had offered something. For example:
at one place I had been providing music to their customers for so many years (over a dozen),
that I eventually ended up bringing in my 400-disc changer. I've even had situations where
I would arrive for lunch and would be given a business card or some other form of contact
that was left by a previous diner because they liked what they were hearing.
There was a time when I was providing music for at least 5 restaurants at one time.
I even did this on some overseas trips. Streaming services are the thing now, so...

[ArtSalt]

Streaming has proven a disaster for musicians IMCO. They don't get shit.

In saying that, I've now almost downloaded from Christmas 1988 to now my entire CD collection to FLAC and it's on several back-ups and I could easily give that away to someone for free.....

Rock music relied very much on mystic and needed to be rare. The record companies knew this and now you can get it all for almost free like water, its lost the hold and magic. But then again rock and pop music in the 60s, 70's and 80s sense is effectively dead. Like the swing bands.

I use to think that rock/pop music was the most dominant cultural force in the last four or five decades of the 20th century, I actually now believe we only thought that. We digged the marketing spin.

[JSngry]

CDs are dead? So that's the stench I've been smelling in my house!

[catesta]

2 hours ago, rostasi said:

It depended on the various situations, but it usually resulted in them asking me to provide music for them -
either in full or partial - after word got out or after I had offered something. For example:
at one place I had been providing music to their customers for so many years (over a dozen),
that I eventually ended up bringing in my 400-disc changer. I've even had situations where
I would arrive for lunch and would be given a business card or some other form of contact
that was left by a previous diner because they liked what they were hearing.
There was a time when I was providing music for at least 5 restaurants at one time.
I even did this on some overseas trips. Streaming services are the thing now, so...

Cool stuff. I did the same a few times for a friend that owned a bar/restaurant. I also had the pleasure years ago of making cds for a friend's wedding reception/dinner since they were trying to avoid the usual DJ crap and it was a smaller setting.

[JSngry]

I'll momentarily enjoy the schadenfreude resulting from DJs being priced out of the market by friends with laptops and mix cds and such.

[Scott Dolan]

2 hours ago, ArtSalt said:

 

I use to think that rock/pop music was the most dominant cultural force in the last four or five decades of the 20th century, I actually now believe we only thought that. We digged the marketing spin.

What was more dominant in the cultural landscape? 

 

[rostasi]

1 hour ago, catesta said:

Cool stuff. I did the same a few times for a friend that owned a bar/restaurant. I also had the pleasure years ago of making cds for a friend's wedding reception/dinner since they were trying to avoid the usual DJ crap and it was a smaller setting.

For a reception/dinner, some people may want a nuance
that's not usually readily available from a guy who may be
unable to "read" the room. One restaurant that I had been 
providing music for was kind of in limbo for a while when it
came to new ownership and the new woman decided that
she could provide her own tunes: consisting of either
"The Carpenters: Their Greatest Hits" or just turning the radio
dial to our local classical station. The young, "hip" crowd left
in droves. At another place, the new owner decided to just
turn on the local dance/hip-hop station - one of those where
even the announcer is Auto-Tuned? - and she'd have it on
really loud! This restaurant was originally known for it's rather
peaceful nature - healthy vegan food done in Chinese style?
You could imagine what happened then! 

[ArtSalt]

20 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

What was more dominant in the cultural landscape? 

 

I don't know: television, film?

If rock and pop was so culturally powerful, how has it fizzled to where it is no longer the zeigeist of our time? Perhaps, we only believe it was that central to everything.

[Scott Dolan]

I think they key word in all of that is "was". 

If it isn't now, which I think is highly debatable, that doesn't mean that it wasn't then. 

Jazz was once popular music. Just because it's more a niche genre now doesn't change that. That history is already written and settled. 

[Coda]

Visualizing 40 Years of Music Industry Sales

Gone are the days when people would line up at the music shop for a hot new release. In fact, CD sales are down 80% in the past decade. Today, physical format sales only account for 17% of the industry’s revenue.

There is, however, one bright spot in physical format segment: vinyl. In 2017, vinyl sales hit 25-year high after making a slow and steady comeback.

http://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/?_lrsc=1e225585-6a12-4a71-b2b5-6ab5f9f62804&utm_campaign=1610-GDC-SOC-MUL-OTH-MUL-Elevate&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin_elevate

 

[riddlemay]

I occasionally stream music via Apple Music through my Apple TV into my stereo. I notice that I always quickly lose interest, and I think it's because of, not in spite of, endless choice. Somehow, when practically the entire world of recorded music is at my fingertips, no one piece of music matters; and my mind quickly turns to wondering what else I could be hearing. When I actively choose a physical disc to play, I listen.

Edited November 12, 2018 by riddlemay

[Scott Dolan]

That is a really outstanding point, as I’ve noticed that at times, too. 

For me, the bigger problem is keeping track of what I’ve heard and really liked. I find myself having to make notes on my iPad, or else I’ll never remember. But sometimes I forget...

[AllenLowe]

didn't know we were still discussing this but I continue to buy CDs as not only the bargain they are (prices of used are going down down down) but as someone convinced that the future of the music is inseparable from the preservation of hard copy. The storage of digital everything, in the next 10-20 years, is going to get so absurd and cumbersome that anyone who wants to know whatever happened in 20th century music will be required to seek out physical media. Data bases and data sheets will become like maps of your anus - physically strange, un-navigatable, and incomprehensible for anyone without advanced and undesirable knowledge. For those uninterested in the 20th, music will become one of tiny-tinny-speakered forests of hard-drive files with tiny name extensions. Those with physical copies will be able to not only see better what they own, but will find it easier to manage because of the very limits imposed by the physical/material world. By 2100 the landfills will be so clogged with dead hard drives that people will see this (our current) age as being like the age of indiscriminate fracking, a desperate last gasp of capitalist expansion and contraction, all done in the interest of quantity rather than quality, and ending on a literal scrap-heap of history.

Remember, you heard it here.

[Scott Dolan]

I disagree in that hard drives are getting smaller and smaller with more and more space for memory. Storing digital media is getting less and less cumbersome by the day, seemingly. And while hard drives will indeed line every landfill, they will have been replaced with newer, smaller, and larger capacity versions. 

 

Oh, and the “tiny, tinny forest thing” doesn’t really stand up. ITunes is far easier to quickly navigate by album cover, artist, etc. than my collection of 1000+ CDs. 

[AllenLowe]

I understand the appeal of storage/streaming. And my CD collection is too large, unwieldy, and something difficult to manage. But eventually those hard drives have to hit the landfill, do they not?

[JSngry]

There are no landfills in the Cloud(s).

But what happens when the weather clears and all the Clouds are gone? Or when just the ones that belong to the winners survive?

[Scott Dolan]

43 minutes ago, AllenLowe said:

I understand the appeal of storage/streaming. And my CD collection is too large, unwieldy, and something difficult to manage. But eventually those hard drives have to hit the landfill, do they not?

??? Absolutely, which is why I said this:
 

50 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

And while hard drives will indeed line every landfill, they will have been replaced with newer, smaller, and larger capacity versions. 

But let me ask you, How do you manage, store and locate anything in your collection now? For example, is your collection in alphabetical order, genre, era? Let's say I come over and you tell me about this CD/LP that you bought 30 years ago, and haven't listened to for 29. How quickly and easily would it be for you to find it in your collection? 

Edited November 12, 2018 by Scott Dolan

[Rooster_Ties]

That's my concern too, Jim. I'm sure 70-80% if what you can reliably stream now will be reliably streamable years from now.

But there's no way to predict which 20-30% will suddenly disappear at some random point 5-10-15 years from now.  And given my luck, a higher proportion of the more obscure stuff I value most will be among the losses.

I don't stream stuff now much, or only randomly (and from YouTube mostly). But if I moved over to relying more on streaming, I might more easily give up my physical copies of certain artists (on certain labels), than others.

Like Monk on Columbia, that's probably (safely) gonna be around forever to stream. Same with Booker Ervin on Prestige. But there's no way I'm gonna get rid of any of my Terumasa Hino CD's, cuz I can't imagine all that much being available now, and then what is, could easily be gone in X years.

Likewise, there are any number of pivotal 20th Century classical works that I don't really listen to but a time or two each year -- "Quartet for the End of Time" for instance (or Schoenberg's string quartets) -- that I'm pretty positive I can stream somewhere or somehow (forever). But some more obscure stuff (with only 1 or 2 released recordings in the CD age), I'm not turning loose of that stuff on physical media.

Everything's probably case by case. But yeah, I could probably see reducing my physical collection by 1/3rd without too much worry. But half of what I have, I would seriously doubt I'd have reliable access to (via streaming), ad infinitum. 

[Scott Dolan]

2 minutes ago, Rooster_Ties said:

 

But there's no way to predict which 20-30% will suddenly disappear at some random point 5-10-15 years from now. 

Can you expand on how you came by these numbers? 

[Rooster_Ties]

42 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

Can you expand on how you came by these numbers? 

Wild guess.

[Scott Dolan]

At any given 5-15 year period in the age of recorded sound has 20-30% of it simply disappeared? 

And even if it did, why would it now in the age of cheap and massive storage, high speed internet, data service, etc. ? 

 

[psu_13]

The recordings themselves do not have to disappear. All that has to disappear is the license to allow the service to keep the tracks on the service.

I've been using Apple Music for a couple of years now and have had 2 or 3 albums just outright become unplayable and have also had various other songs move around or go away mysteriously because the licensing changed. I think 25% might be a high guess, but 10% is not out of the question. IMHO.

 

[JSngry]

Call me a Gloomy Gus, but I can see a point in time (not ours,although, who knows....) where there's a big "conquering" and there is a targeted effort to destroy access to certain "knowledges". It's happened before, multiple times, and there's no reason to think it can't happen again. And when it does, people who have hard copies stashed away will have "secret knowledge" on their hands. History is written by the winners, or so they say, and it's not until the losers' recorded stories start turning up that that begins to change.

That's why although I have no qualms with streaming and/or cloud-based storage, I still like to have a Plan B. Just because.