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Streaming and Money
blgentry:
My objection to streaming is about how consumption of music is perceived and valued by the end user, as well as the actual money changing hands.
Let's talk about consumer perception first. The older model of buying music, physically, on some storage medium (vinyl album, cassette, CD, etc) made consumers think of music as having value. Listening to it was in some way special because you had to go buy it to hear it when you want and for as long as you want. You can listen to the radio, or go to a club, or other things, but to get the personal experience of music, you have to pay for it. ...and the "contract" you have with the music industry is simple: Pay for the physical media and you own that copy forever. Play it as much as you want, whenever and wherever you want. Music has value. Music is special. Music is art.
As music shifted to more and more digital distribution, it's consumer value decreased dramatically. I'll bet the average age of people reading this is over 35. As such, you remember a time when there was NO digital distribution of music. Younger people ONLY know a world where music is digital, it's easy to get, it's (mostly) low quality, and can almost all be had for free, thanks to youtube and other forms of questionable or outright pirated distribution. MP3s made music cheap. Not valuable to consumers in their eyes. Worse, lossy compression has made music less exciting. Less special. It's still art, but it's cheap art. It's everywhere.
Streaming makes this even worse. Because the time investment of the consumer is even smaller. Now there's not even a need to go find it in a digital store, or to find a pirated copy to download. There's no download involved. Just search and hit play. Or SO MUCH worse, just tune in to your "channel" which has all the music already picked out for you. Which removes your involvement in picking the music. Which makes it more and more like radio. Which makes it cheap and not special.
The financial side of this has gone from bad to worse. Musicians don't get paid for illegal downloads of any type. Their "cut" on legal digital music is very, very small. But at least it's still there. With steaming, as I understand it, the financial model pays WAY less per song. After all, this is just like a "radio play" of a song. It's not a download for ownership. Why do I care? For two reasons. First because it's the RIGHT THING for people to get paid for their work. That includes musicians. But more importantly, if there's no financial incentive for record companies, they won't have money to spend recording new music, finding new acts, and doing the BUSINESS they do. Which is making and distributing music, this thing we ALL LOVE.
Digital music has almost killed the record industry. Streaming is going to hurt it more.
I would love to figure out a way to bring back the VALUE to music. To make people under 30 think of music as being as special as I do. That my friends, is why I oppose streaming.
Thanks for reading this overly long diatribe.
Brian.
rec head:
I don't hate streaming. I also don't argue that music may be devalued by it either in that artists get paid less. But I don't think that not listening to albums front to back has devalued music, just changed it. After I buy something I rarely listen to it as an album again. I love random playlists.
flac.rules:
To be brutally honest, I find some of the viewpoints a bit elitist. The fact that music is easier and cheaper to get for everyone is seen as a problem? Why? Why is the "democratization" of culture a problem? More people can enjoy more music than ever before if they please. There is more music produced and more variety in music than it has ever been. When it comes to the art, music is more alive than ever. If you need to pay money or eventually restrict other peoples ability to get the same product to feel something is of worth, I think it is more appropriate to look into changing ones own behaviors rather than the industry.
blgentry:
^ You don't understand economics Elvis.
When the price of a commodity being sold is very low, at some point it's not worth it for the producer to continue producing it. That's one of the big points here. The other point is that, in many people's eyes, music is not valuable. It's just background. Is that how you feel? If so, we probably can't have a meaningful discussion.
Brian.
flac.rules:
--- Quote from: blgentry on July 29, 2015, 08:33:32 am ---^ You don't understand economics Elvis.
When the price of a commodity being sold is very low, at some point it's not worth it for the producer to continue producing it. That's one of the big points here. The other point is that, in many people's eyes, music is not valuable. It's just background. Is that how you feel? If so, we probably can't have a meaningful discussion.
Brian.
--- End quote ---
The price of music has been lowered for many years, the production is bigger than ever, its easier for "everyman", to publish their music than it ever has been. People are motivated by more than money. And even if they weren't the cost of production and distribution is lower.
I don't feel music is background, would you if music was too cheap? Why do you let the price dictate how much you value music?
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