Tag: Streaming Music
Posted inAnalysis, News

Analysts take their guesses at streaming music’s future growth

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

It’s safe to say analyst firm ABI Research is feeling bullish about the growth of streaming music in the years ahead. The company has published its latest predictions, claiming that 29m people will be paying for on-demand streaming services by the end of 2013, with Spotify accounting for 32% of them (9.3m-ish) with Deezer, Korean service MelOn, Rhapsody and Sony’s Music Unlimited its nearest competitors.

By the end of 2018, ABI thinks there’ll be 191m paying subscribers for on-demand service, with a significant upswing in streaming music revenues. The company estimates that by the end of 2013, cumulative revenues so far from on-demand streaming will have totalled $5bn, but that this figure will reach $46bn by the end of 2018.

Posted inAnalysis

Writing or speaking about streaming music screwing artists? Read these articles first

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

I really like Aimee Mann’s music, but her recent interview in which she gave her views on streaming music bothered me. “My record isn’t on Spotify,” Mann told the Telegraph. “People may be outraged, but artists don’t make money from Spotify.”

Artists don’t make money from Spotify. A phrase that crystallises what may be the most important debate in the history of digital music: whether streaming music services can pay off for artists – and more widely, whether they can turn a profit and build a sustainable business for themselves and the music industry.

It bothered me, because it was just tossed out there with no backup. Why does Mann believe that? What data is she working from? As an artist who set up her own label some time ago and has blazed an independent path since, Mann should have an informed view, but details were frustratingly absent from that particular interview.

Leaving that piece aside, though, far too much of the public debate around streaming music services and artist payouts is dominated by gut feeling, partiality and Chinese whispers. What’s needed is more proper data and informed opinion.

So, I gathered some.

Posted inAnalysis, News

The dangers of seeing streaming music royalties as a ‘trickle’

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

For the most part, the debate over artists’ income from streaming music services has been conducted in trade publications and websites.

It’s breaking out now though: check the New York Times’ feature headlined ‘As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow to a Trickle’, which kicks off by focusing on an individual New Yorker who now spends $10 a month on Spotify rather than $30 a month buying music, and then jumps back to cellist Zoe Keating’s reveal last year of her Pandora and Spotify payouts.