In my investigation I am going to be talking about :

How has ‘Spotify’ or other musical streaming effected music sales?

To this day music is discovered and listened to very differently to how it was 40 years. The only way people would be able to listen to music was through e.g. vinyls, CDS, cassette tapes. And now in this century people are streaming music through sits such as Spotify, Itunes, some people listen through youtube which can make it more visually entertaining, some people still buy hard copies such as vinyls, CDs etc. And also alot of people do download illegally.

Streaming on the internet has caused some issues in the industry proving less income to the artists in the music industry. It decreases sales in hard copies which make them less popular, this causes changes with stores that sell them and the people that make the music get much less income. I created a survey that had a variety of questions but one that indicates how people listen to music:

Screen Shot 2016-06-14 at 01.58.21

This shows that the average of people listen to music through streaming and then streaming through Spotify is most popular. I think streaming websites are becoming more and more popular because of the easy use of technology and how popular it is to use e.g. phones, laptops.

Spotify (website)

Spotify states that the average payout for a stream to labels and publishers is between $0.006 and $0.0084 , however you’d think a very popular artist would receive a silly amount of money for their music to get streamed, but they only get a cut of $0.001128 not I think this is very silly how much the artist gets paid, I think they should get paid alot more because at the end of the day it is their music. 70% of the royalties for all of the listenings spotify gives to the rightful owners the people who created e.g. artists, labels etc. which i think is right, personally i do think the artists and song writers should get more through all the work they put into their song. Artists nowadays are bringing out there albums on formats such as vinyl, artists such as the Arctic Monkeys, Jack white and many others because they believe it was better in the old days when you had a hard copy of the music with the sleeve and artwork and some people even say it sounds better than digital copies. I believe this is a good way to bring out music as it isn’t as easy to copy a vinyl it takes alot more effort than say upload and stream.

A good example of an artist who doesn’t agree with the whole streaming music is Taylor Swift. In 2014 she had her music requested to be taken off so people had no excuse but to buy her music for example if she had a new album coming out she wouldn’t be able to make near as much money as she would having it streaming online. She stood out when she decided that her new album,1989, wouldn’t be available on Spotify anymore because the company wouldn’t allow her to restrict it to only those customers who actually pay for the premium service. She is very vocal about it which i think is brilliant, for example she wrote a letter to Apple to stop them from putting her album 1989 free for 3 months before you have to buy a membership, a quote from her letter ‘I’m sure you are aware that Apple Music will be offering a free 3 month trial to anyone who signs up for the service. I’m not sure you know that Apple Music will not be paying writers, producers, or artists for those three months. I find it to be shocking, disappointing, and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company.’ Even Taylor thought it wasn’t right for apple to not pay them for their work which i 100% agree with.

sources: stereogum
Spotify

Is there just one artist who thinks strongly about online streaming? is no one else standing up? No, lots of artists are voicing opinions about online streaming and how it affects their music. For instants David Bryne had a whole article in The Guardian about how he felt about online streaming “For a band of four people that makes a 15% royalty from Spotify streams, it would take 236,549,020 streams for each person to earn a minimum wage of $15,080 (£9,435) a year. For perspective, Daft Punk’s song of the summer, ‘Get Lucky,’ reached 104,760,000 Spotify streams by the end of August: the two Daft Punk guys stand to make somewhere around $13,000 each. Not bad, but remember this is just one song from a lengthy recording that took a lot of time and money to develop. That won’t pay their bills if it’s their principal source of income. And what happens to the bands who don’t have massive international summer hits?”. He looks at it as although people don’t get paid enough so why should they share their art that doesn’t get what it deserves? Another opinion that was voiced was Amanda Palmer who spoke among other artists on a large skype call conversing with artists such as Will.I.Am. Her opinion also links into David Bryne on how she agrees,“And one weird thing is that iTunes, Apple, Spotify, Google, whatever, all of the people who are profiting –YouTube – who are profiting off the artists from the small level to the huge levels aren’t really feeding very much back into the creation of new content. And, that’s actually one of the largest problems, and even though my views aren’t nearly as extreme as David Byrne’s, he does bring up the giant question, which is ‘where is the capital going to come from to make art?‘ And people might think it’s crazy for me to say that, because you can crowd fund, you can – there’s a lot of things you can do.”
As you can see quite a few artists are being vocal about the negative side, I support this considering how much artists don’t get out to how much they put in. However online streaming isn’t the only way musicians make their money, they go on tours, concerts, interviews, sell merchandise e.g. CDs, T-shirts. You can see online streaming as a very much negative or you could see it as a little throw in the road works for your musical career.

For example artists such as Justin Bieber, online streaming was his way into the industry. He got recognised by a manager who contacted Usher about him, however Justin Timberlake also noticed him, so he had 2 offers from 2 very famous artists, but Justin picked Usher, Justin quoted“It had a hundred views, then a thousand views, then ten thousand views, so I just kept posting more videos and more videos,” and when he was 15 he also said “Eventually, I got found by my manager who flew me to Atlanta to meet Usher.” He was very lucky getting such an audience from youtube, it rarely happens getting noticed so easily over the internet.