In the last couple of months, we have heard a couple of artists boycotting streaming services or even digital vendors when it comes to their new releases. We all remember how Taylor Swift took Apple by storm by pulling her catalogue out of iTunes because they were not paying the artists for the streams during the customer’s free trial of the service. Later Apple changed their ways and started paying the artists for the free trial streaming. Taylor was happy and her music catalogue is in iTunes for her fans joy and pleasure. The later these last weeks came Adele with her new album ‘25’. This album will be sold pretty much nowhere most customers will not go buy it: in the stores; no iTunes, no Spotify, etc. We’ll see how that works out for Adele.
If Taylor and Adele’s examples are not enough we have Prince. Prince has decided to take his whole catalogue out of services like iTunes, Pandora, and Spotify because they are making all the money while the artists make little to nothing from the streaming of their music. As of today, Prince is reviewing the possibility of opening his catalogue to the newest streaming service Tidal (Jay-Z’s company).
Just like Prince, I can testify that streaming pays sixpence to the artists. As a published artist I constantly see the streaming reports of my music; the reports look like I barely make any money from streaming. But I would still stream my music because I see that exposure potential that it brings to new artists like myself.
I even stumbled upon an article that expresses the sentiment of many of the fans out there. In his article, Ari Herstand, explains why as a fan he will not be buying Adele’s new album ‘25’. He states that most people are looking for convenience and that most people, like him, don’t own a CD player anymore. I must admit I do only because I have a computer with a CD-ROM drive. Most people will listen to the album or tunes on Spotify, YouTube, and all those streaming services before they decide to buy it.
Adele’s decision to not stream is putting her career in danger because people are really into streaming. Ari states that streaming is not giving much money to the artists at this moment but the possibility of fans discovering one’s music and falling in love with it is big. And that from this possibility people might but the album, whether online or in a store (if they love your music a lot). Adele is just making it impossible for her fans and her future fans to listen to her music and fall in love with it.
On the other side, the only thing that can stop streaming at this point will not be the artists opposition but the high bandwidth it drains from our Internet service, especially in these times where data is no longer unlimited. For the moment, music fans do not seem to care about their data as much. As for streaming, many new artists should use these services to gain more fans that will love their music. Definitely, streaming is here to stay, we just have to learn to use in our favor and fight to get better payments from these services.
Until next time!
