Have Streaming Services Ruined Music

How have streaming services moulded music in the present day?

For consumers, streaming services have completely changed the way we listen to music. It’s easier than ever to discover new music and listen to a huge variety of genres without paying anywhere near as much as we did for physical copies of albums. Streaming services largely solved the growing problem of music piracy for the music industry very successfully, but have presented it with new, possibly bigger problems. Royalties are beyond minimal, if artists ever see them and music has become more commercially-oriented than ever in history.  

This week, as Spotify, Apple, Amazon and the other big streaming services propose the lowest royalty rates in history, it has led many to question what this will mean for artists and how their musical creativity will be affected. This proposal means that artists will earn $1.50 per subscriber and $0.0015 per play on streaming services; the worst rates in in the history of digital streaming, from figures taken from the National Music Publishers Association.

Although the big streaming platforms make huge profits each year, these do not appear to trickle down as fairly as we would hope for the artists we love The biggest question most audiophiles have is how this affects artists’ creativity. Do the algorithms and structure of the biggest streaming services mean that artists have changed the way they write songs?  

Unfortunately there is evidence to suggest that streaming services have created a new, very rigid blueprint for a single which will earn money. To qualify as being listened to on Spotify a song has to be played for at least 30 seconds, leading to many songs becoming far too predictable in putting all of their effort into creating a good first half. Many have noted that songs now tend to be shorter and lack thoughtful lyrics across an entire song. Most songs that make it into the charts are complained to ‘all sound the same’ by music fans. Well there is a chance they actually do if they are following the same structure, forced on them by algorithms that ensure they place the majority of their work into the first 30 seconds to avoid their song being skipped past. Choruses are appearing earlier and earlier meaning that songs are completely centred around the first half with almost nothing new appearing later. Songs are becoming monotonous and predictable to keep listeners happy. Artists nowadays cannot risk exposing their creativity and pushing our tastes too far past our limits for fear of being skipped past.

Moreover, in the days of buying physical copies of albums listeners had to listen to the full album’s worth of music to hear the one single they’d loved on the radio. Now with streaming, a single which charts or gets radio play may be the only song listeners ever hear from an album as they can simply select the one single and ignore the rest. Often, the artist’s more creative, experimental and innovative music is found deep within albums and not necessarily just on singles which chart. The album often has a message conveyed throughout the track list, impacted by the way the tracks are ordered. In the past when listeners used to buy the physical albums they were far more likely to expand their taste as a result as they were forced to listen to a full album to get to the one song they bought the album for. Artists now are taking less creative risks as they now earn money per individual song rather than on albums as a creative entity. Album track lists are getting longer, as artists can make more money from lots of shorter songs, rather than lengthier pieces which often tended to demonstrate more creativity and variation.

Discovering new music has supposedly never been easier, however the algorithms on streaming services, in reality, hinder rather than help listeners expand their musical interests. Rather than broadening our tastes as listeners, streaming services have done completely the opposite, encouraging us to stay within our comfort zones and listen to similar sounding music all the time. Discovery playlists actually force us more into listening to more of the same styles rather than a mix of different genres we have never heard before. Usually as a listener, we are more comfortable listening to music we already enjoy rather than expanding our tastes. Therefore artists have begun to cater to listeners’ wants and create songs which sound pleasurable to all, and similar to the majority of music which is also being released at the same time to ensure listeners will give their music a chance.  

One of the best ways for new artists to be discovered on streaming services such as Spotify is by being selected for one of their customised playlists. Some Spotify playlists are tailored to give listeners artists that they will enjoy because they are similar to other artists. As a result of this some artists go to great lengths to ensure they are heard on Spotify playlists, even by creating a style so similar to a famous band that they will certainly be on that band’s ‘radio’ playlists. The Spotify ‘radio’ playlists also lead to music sounding more and more similar as all artists create the same sounds for a chance to chart and be grouped with similar successful artists. Instead of trying to find their own sound and develop creatively, some artists instead are trying to find the best way to use someone else’s sound in order to be more discoverable. Clearly this is not the case for all artists as the majority still aim to innovate with their sounds, however it is a worrying new trend which does appear to be growing.

Unfortunately, the future of music does appear to be centred on streaming services, however there are ways in which we can help artists realise their creativity as consumers. Physical copies such as vinyls are coming back into fashion and generate far more royalties for artists. Some consumers have suggested that if you listen to an album more than ten times it is worth buying the album so the artist you are enjoying will receive due royalties, benefitting all parties because the music quality on vinyl is in a different league to the lowered quality on most streaming services. Additionally, streaming services such as Bandcamp are offering a new approach to digital streaming which sees artists compensated for their work in a much fairer way. Services such as this could perhaps shape the way we stream, and prove that there are other ways to do streaming which benefit both the artists and listeners.