How has the Music Industry changed with Digital Media

The music industry over the last several years with the introduction of streaming services has changed drastically. Streaming services have affected musicians and artists income drastically because digital download sales have dropped and been traded in for subscriptions to companies that stream like Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, and Google Music. Streaming has become a normal thing for everyone because of the huge growth in smartphone use. This has allowed us access to all the music we could of ever wanted on the go without the hassle of picking only a specific amount allowed on your phone. Why have a few when you can have them all. This has made actual digital music sales drop while also making the creators the artists lose money because they get only a fraction of a penny from each individual play of their songs. The plus side to Streaming is that it gives artists the opportunity to receive exposure. Since there is so much music available for cheap people listen to more music and explore various artists. Artists don’t make much money off of digital downloads anyway’s. Majority of their income comes from performing live or advertising in music videos. What artists do is make themselves a brand and capitalize on that. Now the people who truly suffer because of streaming is songwriters. People mostly just assume that all singers or bands write their own songs, when in reality most of the top 100 songs aren’t written by the people who perform them. In the article “Music streaming demands new wave of licensing rules” it talks about the topic of songwriters making only “in the range of thousandths of a cent per play.” Since artists, producers, songwriters, and musicians make barely any money from streaming Jay Z and Kanye West plus several other artists and investors have invested in Tidal. Which is a new streaming service that supposedly gives the artists and songwriter more control in how much money they make from streams. The problem with the direction streaming is heading is that we have about a handful of streaming services to choose from and each of them are trying to differentiate themselves from each other by having exclusives on their service. One example of this is Kanye West released his seventh studio album “The Life Of Pablo” only on Tidal. This album alone has caused a huge influx of subscribers to Tidal, but what we have to realize is because of this model artists are going to start choosing sides and we the listeners will only be able to listen to certain artists from certain platforms. This will create a eventual divide and upset the listeners. Who knows how this will truly turn out in the future but as of right now it looks like a huge competition between who has the best exclusive music on their service.