I think there has been a change in how people experience music in the last couple years, brought on by the buildup of services that offer streaming songs. This follows up in the vein of the previous trend in music discovery, illegal downloading, which the music industry labeled “piracy.” The new streaming paradigm avoids the complications of piracy for most users, either through paid subscriptions, freely posted content, or sponsored availability. When MySpace attracted a large community of artists, the best feature of each band’s profile page was instant access to a few of their songs. If you hadn’t heard of The Rosewood Thieves, who are playing tonight at the Doug Fir Lounge in Portland, figuring out what they are about is only a few seconds away. You can make your decision on whether to go to that show or not more easily with an instant streaming resource.
This sort of resource compounds its value when it proliferates. Youtube has a huge number of songs and music videos uploaded, including live performance videos. Services like Spotify (not available in the US), and the subscription option Rhapsody give users a wide vareity of licensed tracks to build playlists from. Blip.fm builds another layer on top of these streaming resources, by making social sharing of tracks effortless and fun without hosting most files itself. You can follow “DJs” on Blip.fm who play things you like; they build their own reputation and introduce their subscribers to new music at the same time.
So, first point: this is good for music listeners.
Despite not paying for the Thieves tracks you might listen to tonight on MySpace, their availability might translate into ticket dollars (or maybe CD sales) for a portion of their audience. This consumption, when it happens, is increasingly driven by informed choice, and less by marketing. More people listening to an artist’s tracks means more exposure. More discussion about them (even little bits, like the comments on some Blip.fm posts) builds buzz the same way an organized marketing campaign does.
So, second point: this may be good for artists on the whole. Some of this activity produces revenue directly for artists (like the subscription service Rhapsody.) Some of it produces revenue indirectly. Some of it produces no revenue, and may even potentially subtract revenue if a user that would have bought a CD doesn’t when they find they can listen to some tracks online for free.Research has for a while been indicating that this is not true.
Some of the listening over these streaming sources is not authorized by the copyright holders. For example, some of the tracks queued up on Blip.fm from wherever they are around the web (frequently they are Youtube videos) were not authorized uploads. The objection of a copyright holder to one of these tracks has to take the form of a DMCA takedown notice to the service where it is hosted, not to blip.fm, which only hosts authorized tracks itself. So even when a few tracks are rooted out, the service stays almost completely whole. Legality is questionable, but the industry may be forced to ride the wave anyway.
There is value in finding music that appeals to a certain individual. These tools increasingly make it possible for individuals to navigate the increasingly vast world of available music to find the artists that appeal to them personally. Predictive algorithms, like on Pandora or Last.fm help guess new music that might be appealing, but the best way to find out new music is to find out what people you know are listening to. Word of mouth. There is a huge variety of music available, so filtering mechanisms have become more important. Discovery of music in general is easy, but it is hard to determine whether you have discovered the “best” that there is. Radio used to be the most important filtering mechanism, but radio has not done very well in the Web era. Formats have become more and more standardized when users want more individualized choices. As curators of content, radio stations haven’t developed individual personalities or featured their DJ staff for their own personal tastes. Instead, relatively homogenized playlists are the norm. There are exceptions among college radio stations and independents like WFMU, but for the most part, radio is losing out to individuals in the area of offering individualized music choices. In their stead, individuals using services like Spotify and Playlist.com are sharing their own modern mixtapes. And users are enjoying it.
So, will the other side of the music industry, the record companies that have been suing music fans, be driven to come on board with an “on demand” paradigm?
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