How the soul of music is slowly dying: About the digitalization of music industry

Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, Soundcloud, YouTube - the list of music streaming providers is constantly increasing. Today’s kids know exactly where they can listen to their favorite music. The times where every single vinyl was a lucky discovery in the record shop are clearly over. In the beginning of the Internet age, music industry was still fighting against serious problems with piracy.  Everyone who grew up during those times has been walking around with a taken-for-grantedness when it comes to refusing to pay for music. Now with streaming gaining the upper hand, illegal downloading seems to be off the table. But is this new financing model enough to live up to past times?

The digital age and its technical achievements are giving us the background music we were missing in our lives for such a long time. The musical accompaniment of our emotional state, no matter where, no matter when, seems to function with the simple inserting of little, in plastic encased membranes deep down into our ears. Only one more click to open the right app and the unbelievable amount of more than 35 million songs is provided to the music enthusiast.

It has not always been like that. If you try to think back a couple of years, you will probably remember the one guy in your clique who digitally recorded every imaginable track that you needed for your iPod or for the next party on a 500 gigabyte harddrive. Not only him, but everyone knew that he did not spend a penny for a single of those mp3-tracks. I mean, who is even paying for music? After all, music is everywhere to be found on the Internet and if you want to get it for free, you can get it for free. The “generation for free” agreed silently with the hushed up, but consciously perceived illegal Internet platforms (as well as with not paying for news on the Internet). The Internet seems to have opened the Pandora’s box of music industry.

People who think ahead see many financial losses at the end of this non-existing value chain that need to be regulated somehow. A first and careful attempt to come closer the consumer, who doesn’t want to pay for musical art, is the act of streaming - with affordable prices, a relentlessly growing mass of music and with a development towards a completely non-existing valuing of music itself. The musically always updated consumer is thanking for this offer and at the same time kicking the artists with 7.99 € per month right in the back. Without any guilty conscience, because why should you have one? The legality of music consumption seems to suppress the morality of those minimal costs. Nevertheless, the industry prefers a minor contribution to the costs over watching the pirates downloading illegally or the lawyers suing those pirates furthermore. The artist is recognizing this development first, then accepting it and then slowly burying all his dreams of a “Golden Record” according to music recording sales certification.

Music video blocked by GEMA

Groundbreaking concerning the payment of artists whose videos have been uploaded on YouTube has been the agreement between YouTube and GEMA (Society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights) in Germany in the beginning of November 2016. Since 2009, many YouTube music videos from major label artists as well as videos with background music have not been accessible for German users, because GEMA wanted YouTube to pay a fee for video views of GEMA-protected artists (70.000 in Germany plus several foreign rightholders). YouTube on the other hand refused to pay the required amount for the copyrights, saying that the person who uploads a video should pay for it and not the platform. Many negotiations for a new agreement and several law suits later, they came to an agreement - YouTube pays money to the GEMA and users can finally enjoy limitless music again. Other YouTube-competitors like Spotify have come to an agreement with GEMA too.

It's all about the money, money, money

The future of music streaming is benefiting from the disadvantages of downloading. With its iTunes store, Apple revolutionized the market for digital music and afforded the user to cram his harddrive just like before, but without having a bad conscience about it. In the end, the result is basically the same: a flood of music files, in which you found by accident - after inserting the USB cable of the harddrive into the computer - a once purchased classic record again. MP3-downloading on the other hand is gathering dust. Who doesn’t believe that should ask himself, which songs he bought digitally during the last years. The list will be difficult to count. The revived vinyl-lover will probably laugh about all of this. But if you pay 12 € for a vinyl instead of 1.49 € per song, you sense music not only haptically, you are also way more aware of it. The slow monetizing of a model for the (social) musical center seems to fill in the gap suitably. The harddrive has been relocated into the cloud, the price structure has been adjusted and the consumer is happy again.

Music straight out of the cloud

The words of the real music-enthusiasts criticizing all the “shuffle-players” and “track-skippers” are still legit. People who are walking through the city listening to shuffle-mode, skipping the first song after three seconds, then the next one and again and again until they are thinking “oh yeah, that’s it, that’s exactly the song I wanted to listen to, what a coincidence I found it in this great shuffle-mode”, they are probably having a different understanding of music than people who still go to vinyl shops and rummage in huge CD shelves. That doesn’t mean that this is a bad thing, but the awareness of music as an art form is getting lost.

Music on demand, just out of the pocket

What Spotify once started seems to function for the market. Increasing sales figures of the vinyl industry (30% in 2015) are harming the streaming industry probably just as little as the cinema harmed the theatre. The entertainment is comparable, but the audience is different. People who love haptic and collect vinyls or even CDs are surely having a bigger understanding for the higher prices, but besides that, they are maybe also using the advantages of the mobile music market in their pockets, with its outrageously cheap, but market-conform prices and which they can use wherever and whenever they like to. Sooner or later, streaming will indeed be mainstreaming.