Ten years ago, fans had to buy a whole album to hear one song. Today people can just go on any streaming app like Apple Music or Spotify search up their songs and can immediately stream one song. Since 2015-2017 streaming services started gaining more popularity, but because of that it has affected musicians pay, so it might be beneficial for fans but not musicians.
Instead of buying a song, listeners now go on streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music and put the song they want and that’s it. But the difference between streaming and buying a CD is that streaming gives you a temporary access as long as you pay every month your membership but purchasing a CD will forever give you ownership to it. With CDs, musicians get a higher pay from people purchasing it. Just with one stream alone musicians get $0.012 but because of record labels they receive way less.
Benefits of Streaming
Streaming makes it easier for fans to listen to the song they want without having to purchase a whole CD with other songs they don’t want or need for more money. Streaming has also made it better to explore more artists that make the type of genre the fans love with the recommendations feature on streaming apps. Apart from the fans, it helped underground artists be found by streaming apps when a fan listens to a specific genre of music. Since it’s very difficult to be known because of all the major music artists now, it has made such a huge impact on being found. Now there are way more underground artists being found worldwide.
The Cost of Streaming
On the other hand, streaming has also caused problems for musicians because of how little they get paid per stream. On average they get paid $0.012~$0.015 per stream, and even less if they are signed to a record label or in a band. Which if they were they’d get a fraction of a cent. If they wanted to earn just $1000 they’d have to get about 66,000~83,000 streams. Although it is great advertising and great for them since they make new fans worldwide, they don’t get paid a lot which is worse since streaming services are all there is right now.
The Bottom Line
I’m a student who loves listening to music everyday – at school, during class, at home, going out with friends, cooking, cleaning and just always listening to music. If you wanna help your favorite artist gain more popularity or help them make more money, you’d have to stream their music 66,000 times just to help them. That’s how much streaming has impacted your favorite artist. So maybe next time you wanna help think of that.
In the end, streaming has changed music for everybody. Both good and bad for fans and artists. But because of streaming everyone has the music they love on their phone which is great. Whether you see it is as good or bad the music industry will keep changing, and that’s what matters.
