Abacus: The Guise of Ownership and How Spotify Changed Music
Europa Press News
Streaming has already begun to evolve the structure of the music industry for artists and fans everywhere. Just a little over 20 years ago, the world's first MP3 changed music forever, allowing fans to carry all their music with them. Beyond this revolutionary experience for listeners, artists were still getting their piece of the pie, with physical sales still thriving along with .99 cent digital purchases making up the difference. Since then, the emergence of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music has upset the established digital music landscape often for the worse.
Today, streaming makes up almost 80% of the music industry's revenue, physical media being just 9%. This fact is even more alarming when acknowledging that Spotify pays just $.003 or $.005 per stream. This would imply that artists need 250 streams just to make a dollar. Compare this to a time when a song was played on the radio, artists were paid licensing for that play, and then fans who liked it enough took a risk and maybe bought an album. Today, not only do these artists need almost 250 streams to make just one dollar off their music, but they also need new ways to get their music recognized and licensing deals just to put their music on the platform in the first place. Spotify's answer to this problem has been creating their own playlists to promote artists on the app. Aside from the conflicts of interest that arise from the corporation pushing new music, developing an artistic environment where playing it safe, and commercializing your sound is rewarded with plays, Spotify does not choose this music based on what their employees curation but instead via application. This has led to small artists finding it harder to create their niche and making the prominent artists even bigger.
If this option does not sound appealing, Spotify's CEO has an idea. During a July 2020 presentation, Daniel Ek proposed that "it is not enough for artists to release albums every 3-4 years". He goes on to mention that "The artists today that are making it realize that it's about creating continuous engagement with their fans.". This drive to push out as much "content" as possible is one that has many questioning how streaming platforms have changed art. Places like Netflix have been notorious for taking a quantity over quality approach with their original programming to ensure that there is something to keep everyone entertained until the following month when users decide to cancel or not. This, along with algorithmic suggestions, which many see as dissolving creativity for artists and stifling discovery for viewers, has created a music ecosystem that is unrecognizable for many. Here art is no longer something to be experienced, felt, or discovered, but something to attract viewers who are turned into consumers. The words of Ek echo this idea. Spotify wants as much content for its platform as possible, regardless of quality. The more big-name artists are releasing music, the more people get on their phones to stream it. The processes of honing and crafting the product are irrelevant.
Even with these developments within the industry, artists have worked hard to carve out a living for themselves. In an age where the music itself is no longer the scarce resource it once was, the artist has become the product. The loss of physical media revenues has made touring even more crucial than ever for artists' top-down. Even the most prominent artists in the world make more money from touring than their streaming revenues. This shift has not only tricky for artists who now are expected to grind on tour for most of their careers but in the face of COVID, which has halted touring entirely. This has exposed precisely how damaging the industry's structure's evolution has been for small bands and musicians who rely heavily on those revenues.
All of this said, it appears like things are not all that they seem to be. Spotify's loss-leading strategy that allows users to pay such a low price for unlimited music paid off in the short term as customers flocked to the app. But since then, premium subscriptions have been flatlining, and competition in the form of Apple Music and Tidal has entered the market. Beyond that, Spotify has begun to bet on itself, making headlines for exclusivity deals in the podcasting space with big names like Bill Simmons and Joe Rogan that are expensive. Even during COVID, where people are stuck at home, and streaming numbers were expected to skyrocket, the opposite was true. With falling numbers and plenty of very public opposition to Spotify's payment model, it seems as if the change is around the corner.
The evolution of the music ecosystem was inevitable as soon as the internet was built to move MP3 files around efficiently; Napster saw an opportunity. Ever since then, music as an entity was devalued forever when people saw how music ownership extended beyond 12x10 rectangles. Streaming's pricing model and unlimited nature come at a cost. Albums frequently disappear off the platform when licensing negotiations go array or relations between a record company and the artist dissolve. Non-physical media will only be available as long as it guarantees a profit for the people who host it. A reliance on Spotify has created a world of pseudo-ownership where we can listen to whatever music we want until suddenly it's gone.
Seemingly, I am not the only person noticing this frightening trend. In recent years, a return to physical formats, vinyl, in particular, has been the anthesis of the streaming model—pure ownership in the face of fallacy. While vinyl sales are by no means close to streaming numbers, the format did outsell CDs back in 2019. This revival speaks to the desire for intimacy and connection with art and artists that fans fulfill through ownership.
Further, streaming platforms like Bandcamp have created a different kind of streaming platform where artists, and most importantly, individuality, come before profits and publicity. All of this to say, the music industry is in a tough spot right now. Spotify hegemony has impacted the artistic process and the consumer experience in ways that no one could have expected. Spotify basically changed the music world in a little more than a decade; who's to say what the next one will bring.
