Streaming services are killing the music industry
The days of MP3 players, iPods and CDs are over. Now, streaming has taken over the world; from movies to television to music, everything is done via streaming. The most popular form of entertainment, music, has been heavily influenced by online streaming platforms.
Although having music accessible with just the click of a button may have positives for the consumer, it actually does a lot of damage to the industry itself.
Artists and bands, in particular, are the ones that are affected by online streaming of music the most. Because of streaming, people simply are not buying music anymore.
Meanwhile, platforms like Spotify have soared in popularity, with literally millions of songs streamed each day, worldwide. The issue that is occurring is that the artists are being cheated out of money. When a person listens to a song, the artist receives only about one-tenth of a penny per steam. So, the artist will never make as much as they would have if users buy their albums and songs in physical form.
Presumably, an easy solution would be to simply pay the artist more per stream. However, this would be difficult because the companies are not directly making that money. When giants like Spotify are competing with platforms like Apple Music, they need to keep their prices low in order to attract more consumers. In turn, this leaves the services with less money to pay their artists. This can especially be damaging for smaller or beginning artists in the industry in particular, because everything adds up.
Online streaming for music fans is great. Listening to any song without limitations and at the click of a button is fantastic. But it also stunts content creators, and limits artists financially, making it harder for new artists to emerge, and harder for new songs to come out.
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