Streaming's explosion and the music industry

On Monday, April 3, 2018, Spotify, leader of the music streaming platforms entered the New York Exchange.

Launched in 2008, the platform counts today more 71 million subscribers. Spotify is a part of the huge market of streaming including Apple Music, Deezer, Qobuz, Soundcloud and others.

Streaming has evolved and has had a lot of influence on the music industry. Let us have look at its impact.

With Internet, the music industry has suffered much losses. In fact, because of legal, illegal downloads and the diminution of physical sales, the music industry was affected.

But today, with the success of the streaming platforms, it is slowly standing up. In 2016, the global music market has grew by 5,9% thanks to the streaming incomes which have grew by 60,4%. Yes you read it ! Moreover, digital music represents 50% of the global music market income.

(Figures from the Global Music Report 2017)

The rise of streaming platforms allow unknown artists to promote their music easily. For example Soundcloud is a platform where anyone can share music, like contents…Soundcloud has a free-version but there is also a paid version with more functions (more space to share music, statistics of your account, no ads…). Artists can also collaborate with each other. In fact many famous artists can discover young artists and share their music. For example, Tchami, a famous french DJ has created his own label called Confession on Soundcloud and share new artists.

Some artists from SoundCloud can even be published on Spotify.

With the streaming, it is easier to listen to music, to download it… Some songs on Spotify have more than 1 billion listenings like « Sorry » of Justin Bieber. Because of that, the conditions to get a music recording sales certification have changed. In fact, if we count every single person who listen to a song on a streaming platform, every artists would receive a gold or platinum record. That is why a formula is used to take into account the streaming listenings. But even with this new way to calculate, it is still easier to get a certification. In France, a gold certification corresponds to 50 000 sold copies while in 2006, it represented 100 000 sold copies.

Don’t you think that those rewards lose their value through these changes ?

TOM CAMUS