Music streaming services begin to take over

Ryan Scott

Streaming services are beginning to gain popularity and may be the future for revenue in the music industry. According to Neilson and Billboard, streaming went up more than 30 percent in 2013 totaling 118.1 billion track streams.

The most popular of these streaming services is YouTube, according to Neilson. YouTube will be launching their own music streaming service later that will focus on music instead of videos.

“Back in the day I kept a huge binder with hundreds of CDs and it got so cumbersome that I jumped ship to digital as soon as it was a viable option for me,” said former ASU student Henry Lizano.

Spotify, one of the most popular streaming services has seen its user base grow substantially since they came to the United States in 2011. According to a press release from the company, they currently have more than 24 million active users, of which, 6 million pay for their premium services.

Spotify, similar to other services, makes money one of two ways. Free users will be subjected to ads that generate revenue whereas premium users will pay $10 a month and will not have to listen to ads while streaming.

The concern for many in the industry is whether or not these streams can translate into significant revenue. Spotify has paid more than $1 billion in royalties since their inception, but the amount paid to individual artists has been called into question.

Artists such as Radiohead have pulled their songs from streaming services saying that the money earned was not fair for the amount of play the songs were getting. Anssi Kela, a Finnish pop star, recently published his earnings for his hit “Restless Girl” after it hit 1 million plays on Spotify. Kela earned $3,200 and decided to pull his music from the service as a result.

However, other artists feel as though it is a part of the future and embrace it as a useful tool.

“Think of all the people that will find us on Spotify that will find us because of no other way,” said Matthew Foos, drummer for local band Fairy Bones.

The band singer Chelsey Louise added that the band feels as though they have to be more of a business than just musicians in the current market. She said that bands have to have lots of different revenue streams to succeed and can’t just rely on music sales.

“You’re not gonna make money off music anyway,” Louise said. 

  • Mesa Legend Staff

    These are archived stories from Mesa Legend editions before Fall 2018. See article for corresponding author.

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