*Featured image taken from The Odyssey*

What is your preferred way to listen to music?

• Streaming (ex. Spotify, Apple Music) (75%, 36 Votes)
• Physical copies (ex. CDs, vinyls) (25%, 12 Votes)

Total Voters: 48

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Technology has its pros and cons with the music business and for the average person, the pros are easier to see. Phones and computers make music more accessible (legally or illegally) and social media is great for recruiting fans and gaining support for artists, but let’s not forget the “business” side to the music business.

If there are artists producing music as a career successfully then they have to get paid, and rightfully should be. Someone’s music gaining popularity means that person deserves the royalties from said record. Simple enough. But what happens when the value of a song or album drops? So does the artist’s income.

When a person subscribes to a music streaming service like Spotify or Apple Music, they have unlimited music at their fingertips for $10 a month. We’re all guilty of the unspoken crime. It’s easy, it’s convenient, and it’s cheap. Where an album normally costs around $10-$13, why pay that when you could pay the same for so much more? Well, if you really support an artist, you might want to consider it.

Streaming has become more and more common and artists/musicians are suffering. According to Time, streaming service Spotify has a payout range of $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream. That’s it. As opposed to the average $1.29 for a song on iTunes or maybe around $15 for an album download, CD, or vinyl.

It’s obvious to see why singers and songwriters are losing money and music sales are on a decline. With a CD or vinyl record, there’s so much more that goes into the process. The artwork inside of it, the actual encasing, the physical music itself; it all has so much more worth to it. A stream is just a track being played through the internet. Maybe now it’s easier to understand why Taylor Swift pulled all her music from Spotify in 2014 (later to be re released in 2017).

At this point, the only people who can save the music industry is the consumers or the music providers themselves (which probably won’t happen if they are currently leading). The downside to this is that consumers don’t necessarily care about the musicians or the behind the scenes portions to all of this, they just want to easily listen to their favorite music for cheap, which is what is happening now.

The upside is, as trends come and go, one of the biggest trends in music right now is vinyl records. Yes everyone, they are back in style. With trends like this, maybe other forms of music like CDs or cassette tapes will make a come back too and the music industry won’t have to die at the hands of the people who once made it thrive.