2010s in the music industry

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The second decade of the 21st century has continued to usher in new technologies and devices built on the technological foundation established in the previous decade. Technologically speaking, our personal devices and lives have evolved symbiotically, with the personal computer at the center of our daily communications, entertainment, and education. What has changed is accessibility and versatility; users can now perform the same functions and activities of their personal computer on a wide range of devices: smartphones, tablets, and even more recently, smart watches. The increase in personal computing capacity has a profound impact on the way people listen to, promote, and create music.

Contents

Digital music distribution is still the primary form of music consumption, with three main business models dominating the scene: subscription-based services, a-la-carte, and advertisement-based services (see 2000s in the music industry).

Digital music distributors

There are currently five big players in the digital music distribution space: Spotify, Apple Inc, YouTube, Tidal, and Amazon (in order of number of users).

Spotify

Launched out of Sweden in 2008, Spotify has become the leader of subscription-based digital music consumption with 40 million subscribers worldwide. [1] They have a database of over 8 million songs and offer accessibility via a web, desktop, and mobile application. Spotify currently employs over 1,600 employees and operates as a private organization.

Pricing: $9.99 per month for single users, $4.99 per month for students, and $14.99 for families (up to 6).

Business model: subscription-based streaming.

Apple Inc

iTunes Music Store:

Launched in 2003, the iTunes Music Store is the global leader in a-la-carte digital music downloads, with over 26 million songs being offered in their database as of September 2012. [2]

Pricing: The iTunes music store has a three-tiered pricing system, with songs selling for either $.69, $.99, or $1.29 depending on popularity and demand. [3]

Business model: a-la-carte downloads.

Apple Music

Apple Inc. responded to the increasing demand for subscription-based streaming services (evident by Spotify's success) in June 2015, with the release of Apple Music. Operating in over 100 countries, Apple music offers users their own take on 24/7 radio stations and music suggestions: and "for you" and "new" tab managed by talented music experts. [4]

Pricing: $9.99 per month for single users, and $14.99 for families (up to 6).

Business model: subscription-based streaming.

YouTube

Launched in November 2015, YouTube Music is an app that allows users to search through their database of over 30 million audio tracks. But YouTube is also unique because it offers a breadth of concert footage/audio.

Pricing: The app is free, but has advertisements. For $9.99, users can subscribe to YouTube Red, which removes ads and adds offline access to the My Mix playlist. The latter incorporates both tracks the user has listened to and new suggestions. [5]

Business model: advertisement/subscription-based streaming.

Tidal

Originally launched in 2014, Tidal was founded from Norwegian/Swedish public company Aspiro. In 2015, Jay-Z acquired Aspiro and rebranded Tidal, stating that it was the first digital music streaming service by artists; in 2015 Tidal held a press conference where sixteen big-name music artists (like Daft Punk, Kanye West, Madonna) announced that they were partial owners, and held a stake in Tidal. [6] Tidal currently claims to have 42 million paying subscribers. [7]

Pricing: Tidal premium (the first tier option) is priced at $9.99 per month while the Tidal HiFi (second tier) is priced at $19.99 and gives users access to higher quality tracks known as "high fidelity, lossless audio" which come in the form of FLAC.

Business model: subscription-based streaming.

Amazon

Launched as a beta in 2007, Amazon Music is a digital music streaming service that combines the a-la-carte and subscription based payment models; users can download or stream songs. Included with an Amazon prime membership, the Amazon Music catalog currently consists of 29,157,740 songs.

Pricing: Amazon Prime subscribers are given access to part of the music library, and can unlock full access by paying either $8 a month, or $79 per year. Non Amazon-Prime users can pay the industry standard of $10 per month, and there is a $4 per month option for users who exclusively listen through Amazon's Echo speaker. [8]

Business model: subscription-based streaming + a-la-carte downloads.

Exclusive releases

Recently, the music industry has seen another consistent decline in album sales in response to the rising popularity of streaming services. [9] [10] As a result, music superstars have been trying a new method for increasing album profits: exclusively releasing their music on a specific digital music distributor. 2016 saw exclusive album releases from music superstars such as Drake, Kanye West, Frank Ocean, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Future & Coldplay. Drake's latest release, Views , was exclusively released on Apple Music and set a first-week streaming record at 250 million times worldwide, in addition to 1 million albums sold – breaking Justin Bieber's streaming record of 205 million times within the album Purpose's first week of release on Spotify (which has 5 times the subscribers as Apple Music). [11]

On the business side, exclusive releases can help digital music conglomerates attract a significant number on new subscribers (depending on the artist) as well as free promotion for the firm. On the other side of the equation, the artist is paid a nominal fee in addition to the streaming revenue. [12]

Exclusive streaming may be on the way out just as quickly as it appeared. Record labels have begun to realize that exclusively releasing through one or two streaming services could stunt the long-term growth in subscription music. [13] The upfront fee may be enticing to struggling labels in the short term, but may hurt their overall sales and streaming while the streaming services themselves benefit much more from the PR, new users, and streaming itself.

Following the release of Frank Ocean's exclusive release of his album Blonde, Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group banned exclusive distribution with streaming services by UMG artists. [14]

But exclusive releases are still poised to benefit both the artists themselves, and the streaming service. It is possible that the practice will continue from superstar artists who record and release music from their own labels (like Frank Ocean did with Blonde). This would be yet another reason for artists to leave their labels; they would reap more financial benefits in cutting out the labels.

Crowdfunding

"Rewards based crowdfunding is a collective effort involving a group of people (the crowd, contributors, backers) and a project creator (project owner or campaign manager) to fund a specific venture. The creator of that venture requests from the crowd to contribute small amounts of capital to fund his or her new concept (many of them from his or her immediate social network), which is usually hosted from an internet-based platform. In return for the crowd's contributions, rewards or perks are offered to the contributors from the project itself." [15] Rewards based crowd funding has become increasingly popular within the education, sports, video games, retail, and music industries.

Remote music collaboration

Thanks to the advent of technology (and the digitalization of music recording and distribution), more and more music artists have started to collaborate online as a method for overcoming the physical distance between artists. The music industry has seen more remote music collaboration on the recording side of music in particular; the standard for recording music is digital, and individual audio tracks are easily transferable over the web. It is important to note that some people do prefer the classic way of recording in analog as a way of capturing a specific timbre. But even when people record music in analog, audio tracks can still be digitized and shared the same way.

Example

One example of remote music collaboration for music recording is the band Good Tiger for their debut album, "A Head Full of Moonlight". "With members in various locations throughout the globe, "A Head Full of Moonlight" was pieced together internationally by a selection of exceptionally talented individuals. Guitars and bass were recorded at Dez's own studio, Playgle Productions. Vocals were tracked both in Los Angeles with Brandon Paddock (Avril Lavigne, Black Veil Brides, Daughtry) and Washington DC (with Dez). Drums were captured in the British countryside at Middle Farm Studios with Adam 'Nolly' Getgood of Periphery fame. Finally, the record was co-mixed by Dez and Nolly, with mastering by Kris Crummett at Interlace Audio." [16]

Applications

Remote music collaboration has also created many new possibilities on both the performance, and educational side of the music industry as well. Right now there are two desktop applications available for the digital musician: LOLA and Ultragrid.

A 2016 study looked into the efficiency of LOLA and Ultragrid for remote music collaboration. The study concluded that a delay between 15ms and 30ms is necessary in order to play music together, remotely. The research also found the following metrics to be important for live, remote music collaboration: quality of sound capture & reproduction, volume, dynamics, space, and echo. [19]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital music store</span> Online retailer of audio files

A digital music store is a business that sells digital audio files of music recordings over the Internet. Customers gain ownership of a license to use the files, in contrast to a music streaming service, where they listen to recordings without gaining ownership. Customers pay either for each recording or on a subscription basis. Online music stores generally also offer partial streaming previews of songs, with some songs even available for full length listening. They typically show a picture of the album art or of the performer or band for each song. Some online music stores also sell recorded speech files, such as podcasts, and video files of movies.

The open music model is an economic and technological framework for the recording industry based on research conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It predicts that the playback of prerecorded music will be regarded as a service rather than as individually sold products, and that the only system for the digital distribution of music that will be viable against piracy is a subscription-based system supporting file sharing and free of digital rights management. The research also indicated that US$9 per month for unlimited use would be the market clearing price at that time, but recommended $5 per month as the long-term optimal price.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">JioSaavn</span> Indian music streaming service

JioSaavn is an Indian music streaming service and a digital distributor of Hindi, Marathi, English, Malayalam, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Chhattisgarhi and other regional languages of India. Since it was founded in 2007 as Saavn, the company has acquired rights to over 80 million music tracks in 16 languages. JioSaavn is a freemium service; basic features are free with advertisements or limitations, while additional features, such as improved streaming quality and music downloads for offline listening, are offered via paid subscriptions.

Deezer is a French music streaming service founded in 2007. The company has been a subsidiary of Access Industries since 2016. Deezer is available via web and on various digital platforms, including Android, iOS, macOS and others.

Spotify is a Swedish audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 615 million monthly active users, including 239 million paying subscribers, as of March 2024. Spotify is listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American depositary receipts.

A music streaming service is a type of online streaming media service that focuses primarily on music, and sometimes other forms of digital audio content such as podcasts. These services are usually subscription-based services allowing users to stream digital copyright restricted songs on-demand from a centralized library provided by the service over the internet. Some services may offer free tiers with limitations, such as advertising and limits on use. They typically incorporate a recommender system to help users discover other songs they may enjoy based on their listening history and other factors, as well as the ability to create and share public playlists with other users. It may also include customized radio or social media platforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Groove Music</span> Microsoft audio player software application

Groove Music is a discontinued audio player software application included with Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows 11.

EmuBands is a digital music distribution service founded in 2005 and headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland. It provides a platform for self-releasing artists and independent record labels to distribute their music across various digital streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Tidal.

Mixcloud is a popular British online music streaming service that allows for the listening and distribution of radio shows, DJ mixes and podcasts, which are crowdsourced by its registered users.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gaana (music streaming service)</span> Indian commercial music streaming service

Gaana is India's largest subscription-based commercial music streaming service with over 200 million monthly users. It was launched in April 2010 by Times Internet and provides both Indian and international music content. The entire Indian music catalog was available to users worldwide however as of 2023, the music library is restricted based on geolocation of subscribers. Post this the music catalog is severely limited for subscribers outside India. Gaana features music from 21 Indian languages including the major languages such as Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Urdu, Odia, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Maithili, Malayalam and other Indian regional languages.

The following is a list of on-demand music streaming services. These services offer streaming of full-length content via the Internet as a part of their service, without the listener necessarily having to purchase a file for download. This type of service is somewhat similar to Internet radio. Many of these sites have advertising that supports free-to-listen options as well as paid subscription-based premium options.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beats Music</span> Online music streaming service

Beats Music was a subscription-based Digital music store streaming service owned by the Beats Electronics division of Apple Inc. The service combined algorithm-based personalization with expert music suggestions from a variety of sources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GhostTunes</span>

GhostTunes was an online music store and digital library founded by American country music singer Garth Brooks, Randy Bernard, and Chris Webb. It launched in September 2014 and featured singles and albums from a variety of artists, including Brooks' entire catalogue. GhostTunes varied from other online music stores such as the iTunes Store by allowing the individual record labels to choose their selling format, such as entire albums or singles, as well as prices, with an emphasis on fair and proper royalty payments. Its digital library could be synced across multiple devices, creating a multi-platform collection encompassing all user-downloaded music, regardless of the store used to purchase.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tidal (service)</span> Subscription-based music streaming service

Tidal is a Norwegian-American music streaming service, launched in 2014 by Swedish public company Aspiro. Tidal is now majority-owned by Block, Inc., an American payment processing company that is owned by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey.

Apple Music is an audio and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. Users select music to stream to their device on-demand, or they can listen to existing playlists. The service also includes the sister internet radio stations Apple Music 1, Apple Music Hits, and Apple Music Country, which are broadcast live to over 200 countries 24 hours a day. The service was announced on June 8, 2015, and launched on June 30, 2015. New subscribers get a one-month free or six months free trial with the purchase of select products before the service requires a monthly subscription.

Electric Jukebox was a digital media player developed by The Electric Jukebox Company. Designed as a dongle, and a "Nintendo Wii style" motion-sensitive controller with a built-in microphone for voice search, The device played music audio content on a high-definition television and home audio system by directly streaming it via Wi-Fi from the Internet.

Wynk Music is an Indian Music streaming service and a digital distributor in 14 languages. Launched in September 2014 by Airtel Digital Limited, and digital wing of Bharti Airtel Limited. It is available in India, Sri Lanka, and 15 African countries. It has program that helps independent artists launch their music. It provides mentorship, distribution support, and the ability to earn from every stream.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">YouTube Music</span> Music streaming service by YouTube

YouTube Music is a music streaming service developed by the American video platform YouTube, a subsidiary of Google. The service is designed with a user interface that allows users to explore songs and music videos on YouTube based on genres, playlists, and recommendations. In April 2023, the service expanded its offerings to include support for podcasts.

Spotify, a music streaming company, has attracted significant criticism since its 2006 launch, mainly over artist compensation. Unlike physical sales or downloads, which pay artists a fixed price per song or album sold, Spotify pays royalties based on the artist's "market share"—the number of streams for their songs as a proportion of total songs streamed on the service. Spotify distributes approximately 70% of its total revenue to rights holders, who then pay artists based on their individual agreements. Multiple artists have criticised the policy, most notably Taylor Swift and Thom Yorke, who temporarily withdrew their music from the service.

References

  1. ↑ Number of paying Spotify subscribers worldwide from July 2010 to September 2016 (in millions) : https://www.statista.com/statistics/244995/number-of-paying-spotify-subscribers/
  2. ↑ Apple Unveils New iTunes: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2012/09/12Apple-Unveils-New-iTunes/
  3. ↑ Price Hike Hits Apple's iTunes Store: http://appleinsider.com/articles/09/04/07/price_hike_hits_apples_itunes_store
  4. ↑ Apple Music Overview: https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-music-overview/
  5. ↑ YouTube music is here, and it's a game changer: https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/12/9723496/youtube-music-app-offline-background
  6. ↑ It's Official: Jay Z's Historic Tidal Launches With 16 Artist Stakeholders: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6509498/jay-z-tidal-launch-artist-stakeholders
  7. ↑ 5 things to know about Jay Z's Tidal amid Apple takeover rumors :https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jay-z-music-streaming-service-tidal-apple-acquisition-rumors-kanye-beyonce-madonna-155621628.html?soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma
  8. ↑ Amazon breaks out streaming music in a duet with Echo: https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-music-unlimited-launch-echo-alexa-apple-spotify/
  9. ↑ Old albums outsold new releases for the first time ever: https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/22/10816404/2015-album-sales-trends-vinyl-catalog-streaming
  10. ↑ Apple Music now has 13 million subscribers: https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/26/11513410/apple-music-13-million-subscribers
  11. ↑ Drake's Views has been streamed over 250 million times worldwide: https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/5/11590500/drake-views-first-week-250-million-streams-apple-music
  12. ↑ Exclusive albums are the new normal: https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/11/11657820/exclusive-albums-are-the-new-normal
  13. ↑ Music Industry Hits Pause on Exclusive Album-Release Deals: https://www.wsj.com/articles/music-industry-hits-pause-on-exclusive-album-release-deals-1473327004
  14. ↑ Universal reportedly outlaws streaming 'exclusives' after Frank Ocean release: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/23/universal-streaming-exclusives-frank-ocean-release
  15. ↑ What is rewards-based crowdfunding?: http://www.visionlaunch.com/what-is-rewards-based-crowdfunding/
  16. ↑ Good Tiger: http://www.metalblade.com/goodtiger/
  17. ↑ LOLA: LOw LAtency audio visual streaming system: http://www.conservatorio.trieste.it/art/lola-project/lola-low-latency-audio-visual-streaming-system Archived 2016-11-12 at the Wayback Machine
  18. ↑ Ultragrid: http://www.ultragrid.cz/
  19. ↑ Ubik, Sven; Navratil, Jiri; Melnikov, Jiri; Goo, Boncheol; Mohd Noor, Faridah Noor; Baumann, Alain; Hrb, Jaroslav; Allocchio, Claudio; Castillo, Gerard (2016). "Cyber performances, technical and artistic collaboration across continents". Future Generation Computer Systems. 54: 306–12. doi:10.1016/j.future.2015.06.009.
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