Is music ownership dead? Spotify, Rdio and the rise of streaming in the UK and Europe
As broadband and mobile data speeds go up and cloud storage prices go down, it seems almost inevitable that the bulk of the music lovers of the future won't bother with owning any music at all - they will simply sign up to their streaming service of choice if they are serious music fans, or make do with YouTube and the like if they are casual listeners. But what are the next challenges for software and app developers?
In case you’re not always glued to the official Spotify Twitter feed, let me repeat a fact that was recently mentioned on it — if you were to listen to every song in the Spotify catalogue, back to back, without stopping to eat or sleep, it would take you 100 years. Of course, an abundance of music is nothing particularly new, but never before has it been so easily accessible. As broadband speeds increase, and streaming music services grow in popularity, it seems we’re on the verge of a second digital music revolution.
The first digital music revolution, in case you missed it, happened when many of us swapped our CD and cassette players for iPods
The first digital music revolution, in case you missed it, happened when many of us swapped our CD and cassette players for iPods (and other less popular digital music players). The famous MP3 arrived, which could cram decent quality music into a much smaller file size, and as broadband took off it no longer took hours to download tracks and albums. For many younger music lovers, iTunes, Amazon and 7Digital took the place of HMV and Double Four Records. Queueing up a day’s worth of listening now only took a couple of mouse clicks, and our CD shelves grew dusty and neglected.
In 2008, Spotify arrived, challenging the still-fresh digital music paradigm. Founder and CEO Daniel Ek is pictured speaking at a conference in New York
Spotify makes it possible to hear as much new music as you like
In 2008, Spotify arrived, challenging the still-fresh digital music paradigm. For a flat, monthly fee, listeners can listen to as much music as they like. Spotify’s subscribers will never actually own anything, but the choice of songs is now (virtually) unlimited. There is much about Spotify that makes sense — there’s no need to download anything or clear space on a hard drive; it makes it possible to hear as much new music as you like, without paying anything extra; and you can listen on the go or without an Internet connection, if you’ve cached some of your playlists for offline listening (as networks are upgraded, this will become less and less important). Other services like Rdio have joined the fray, and been broadly embraced, which poses the question: is music ownership dead? Will those who buy MP3s soon become as rare as those who buy vinyl?
Other services like Rdio have joined the fray, and been broadly embraced, which poses the question: is music ownership dead?
YouTube features just about every popular song of the last twenty years and beyond — why pay anything when you can hear (and watch) the majority of your favourite tracks for the price of a small pop-up advert?
There are a few factors to bear in mind if we’re going to hazard a guess at an answer. One is YouTube, which features just about every popular song of the last twenty years and beyond — why pay anything when you can hear (and watch) the majority of your favourite tracks for the price of a small pop-up advert? Brave a party mostly attended by under-25s and you’re as likely to find revellers queueing up YouTube clips on a laptop as scrolling through a playlist on an iPod. After all, Google’s data centres can hold many more hits of the 80s, 90s and 2000s than your Nano can.
Spotify and its ilk don’t quite have the instant simplicity of YouTube, but the catalogue is broader and the principles are the same. Why pay for Rhianna’s latest chart-topper if you can hear it (almost) any time, (almost) anywhere, for free (or as part of your existing subscription)? The advantages of digital music ownership are starting to look shaky as Spotify, Rdio and YouTube appear on more and more devices, and there’s certainly not the same kudos associated with stuffing your hard drive with MP3s as there is with building up a treasured CD collection.
Always-on, high-speed Internet is another factor killing off the idea of ownership. To switch art forms for a moment, compare having to transfer gigabytes’ worth of movies to a new computer with simply loading up a Web browser and signing into Netflix. Spotify works the same way, as does any cloud service like Facebook or Gmail — if you’re too young to remember having to transfer an Outlook Express inbox from an old computer to a new one, consider yourself blessed. Apple, Google and Microsoft know this, which is why they are all making such a determined push into cloud services.
Is it inevitable that the bulk of the music lovers of the future won’t bother with owning any music at all?
As broadband and mobile data speeds go up and cloud storage prices go down, it seems almost inevitable that the bulk of the music lovers of the future won’t bother with owning any music at all — they will simply sign up to their streaming service of choice if they are serious music fans, or make do with YouTube and the like if they are casual listeners. The next challenge for software and app developers is creating a workable recommendation and playlist management system when users have access to a music library that would take two lifetimes to listen to.
8:19 pm 3rd May, 2012
The false sense of ’Always-on’ is what most worrysome about this. The average user has no idea that there are as many points of failure as there are when relying on services like these instead of actually owning music. Internet service, content licensing litigation, the very structure of the internet itself. There’s never ever anything even close to a garauntee that these things will remain reliable, but firing up a local version you own (files or physical media), short of equipment failure (for which redundancy is easy), you can’t beat that.
While I do use Spotify and Grooveshark, I still buy CD’s and maintain high bit rate mp3\’s and FLACs. Not only does it sound amazing on reference DACs, amps and speakers, but one day, when I\’m dead, its all going to my daughter.
I don\’t think she would get as much joy and real sense of all the notes in those songs with a Spotify account.
6:15 pm 3rd May, 2012
I would extend this notion to all forms of media not just music, I can easily foresee the consumer habits towards television and film will transition into an a-la-carte on demand rental market or something similar to what Netflix and LOVEFiLM are offering already.
Personally speaking, owning entertainment media doesn’t make sense, I think of all the Blu-ray/DVD discs I have on the shelf and I must have only watched each no more than twice, if you consider that and work out a cost per-view its considerably higher than any premium you’d expect to pay for a 24/48hr rental.
There will of course be a segment of the market, both in terms of music and others, which will not adopt this, those who are attached to owning things, but realistically as more do transition into this new model and with rising costs of production for physical products and continuously declining sales, the market will transition into this rental subscription model on its own accord although lets be realistic, the old guard execs at the top will attempt to bleed the old model dry before hand so it may be quite a bumpy road ahead but it will be the future.
4:36 pm 3rd May, 2012
@neil.boothman, for those of us who are ’attached to owning things’ thats not really what its about. Its about keeping control over the media you pay for. This isn’t like clutching your betamax until death, its a matter of prioritizing the form that lets you keep control over the exapansion of methods of consumption and not being at the whim of one companies decisions. Like many others, I consume my music many different ways and those ways do vary as time and technology changes, but its always up to me and the existence and decisions of one company don’t dictate what I can and can’t do.
The business model we’re talking about here is clearly taking over but the reality is it might just be because users are being blinded by convenience. Its also worth noting that music is different in this case than say movies (that you claim you ’must have only watched each no more than twice’) because most users do continually consume their choice of music much more frequently. What do you think the cost per listen is for hearing a piece of music you own hundreds (if not thousands) of times in your lifetime. It becomes even more worth it if your a music fiend and listen all the time. Its the same reason people buy cars rather than renting them for 10-15 years.
3:50 pm 3rd May, 2012
@brandonmorles, I used to be a CD buyer. iPods came along and I ripped my CDs to my iPod, eschewing downloads because I’d rather “own” music. Then something changed for me. I realised that the thing you own is just worthless plastic. You never own the music on the CD. And I calculated my wife and I have a music collection which, based on original purchase price, gets you 47 years of Spotify. And half of my CDs I don’t really like. I never want to own a CD, download or anything ever again.
As for points of failure, you can’t even listen to vinyl in a power cut. And broadband is largerly as reliable as electricity and will surely get better.
Even the CDs I own I listen to via spotify on the iPad – because searching the shelves takes too long.
What I’d really like is an app which combines the best bits of Rdio and Spotify – because neither are perfect.