Here comes the sun (streaming version)
For years streaming has been heralded as the potential savior of the music world, a harbinger of change that could bring riches back to a wider pool of struggling artists, labels, and publishers. But, especially on the back of recent news that Spotify is set to raise prices by $1-2 a month for the second consecutive year, some critics are starting to ask: why is it taking so long?
Indeed, though there’s never been a more convenient time to be a music fan — with millions of songs just a tap away — in purely financial terms, the American music industry is still a fraction of its former self. Data from the RIAA reveals that, once adjusted for inflation, recorded music revenues in the US are still down 36% from their 1999 peak, when millions were heading out to get their hands on CD copies of Believe by Cher or the Backstreet Boys’ Millennium.
Conspicuous convenience
The days of checking overplayed CDs for scratches, using a pencil to fix an unspooled tape cassette, or saving up for that state-of-the-art Walkman might seem as alien to contemporary music listeners as gathering around the gramophone, but it’s hard to overstate how much change the music industry has endured in recent decades.
Vinyl’s dominance in the 1970s, when artists like Stevie Wonder and Abba were selling millions of records, was an era of music-listening that is now heavily romanticized... even by Gen Z. But, if necessity is the mother of invention, convenience is surely a close relative, with music lovers keen to take their favorite tracks with them, and 12-inch records offering little in the way of portability. Smaller cassette tapes became the on-the-go option, only for CDs, offering the same flexibility with better sound quality, to displace the cassette in the 1980s — ushering in the industry’s golden age and eventually accounting for 89% of revenue at its peak in 1999.
