When will streaming reach its peak in America?

[THINKIN BOUT YOU]

When can streaming reach its peak in America? Anyone's bold predictions?

[SPRΞΞ]

May 11, 2016 23:27:58 GMT -5 THINKIN BOUT YOU said:

When can streaming reach its peak in America? Anyone's bold predictions?

When it stops being free.

[Gary]

May 11, 2016 23:27:58 GMT -5 THINKIN BOUT YOU said:

When can streaming reach its peak in America? Anyone's bold predictions?

It will peak, just a matter of time

• Prices will go up to account for losses already incurred
• the free services will dry up because ad revenue won't be able to keep up with royalty payments
• As we are already seeing, artists will align themselves with a single service, forcing users to pick up multiple subscriptions
• 
  

[imbondz]

May 12, 2016 10:19:09 GMT -5 Gary said:

May 11, 2016 23:27:58 GMT -5 THINKIN BOUT YOU said:

When can streaming reach its peak in America? Anyone's bold predictions?

It will peak, just a matter of time

• Prices will go up to account for losses already incurred
• the free services will dry up because ad revenue won't be able to keep up with royalty payments
• As we are already seeing, artists will align themselves with a single service, forcing users to pick up multiple subscriptions
• 
  

Then hopefully a new way of consuming music will appear, blindsiding the record labels again.

Right now Spotify is perfect to me. The $9.99/mo rate is very reasonable. I listen to a lot of music tho so it's high on the list of wants.

[Au$tin]

May 12, 2016 10:19:09 GMT -5 Gary said:

May 11, 2016 23:27:58 GMT -5 THINKIN BOUT YOU said:

When can streaming reach its peak in America? Anyone's bold predictions?

It will peak, just a matter of time

• Prices will go up to account for losses already incurred
• the free services will dry up because ad revenue won't be able to keep up with royalty payments
• As we are already seeing, artists will align themselves with a single service, forcing users to pick up multiple subscriptions
• 
  

I don't agree with that last bit. It didn't happen with digital sales, so I don't expect it to happen here. Eventually streaming will become too big to ignore and will become the norm to release it everywhere simultaneously like what happened with digital sales (outside of the very rare occurrence). What I see happening is more aligned with what happened with the digital sales providers. One will eventually stand out as the top dog (iTunes) while most of the others crash to exceptionally low market shares (Napster), some dying out all together (Walmart), leaving only one decent competitor (Amazon). This is exactly what will happen with streaming.

Top dog will be Spotify, YouTube Red will be Napster, TIDAL will be Walmart, and YouTube itself/Pandora (after an eventual reformat of the program to allow on demand)/Apple Music will be Amazon. And Apple Music will only continue to be a decent competitor because they already have the digital sales crown to help sustain themselves.

[jenglisbe]

I wonder if at some point services will combine more so that you get shows/movies and music for your monthly fee.

[Gary]

We see permanent streaming exclusives now with Tidal and shorter term exclusives with Apple


If that continues, you won't be able to just pick a streaming service and get everything you want. In addition to price, you then have to look at what they have in their catalog. This could mean picking up multiple services or picking one service and settling for less.



Movie and TV streaming services are that way too. No one service offers everything. If you want everything you gotta pay up or you confine yourself to what the srevice of your choice has to offer.

[imbondz]

Tidal and Apple are paying those exclusive artists a huge chunk of money that probably makes up for them not having their stuff at Spotify. I'm assuming it's a marketing expense. After they realize they can't compete with Spotify those exclusives will probably dry up.

[Gary]

Or it could get fragmented like the TV streaming services

Netflix loses contracts with some of the networks because they decide they want to offer their own streaming service for a monthly fee, like CBS is doing

[Glove Slap]

Dumping this post I made in a different thread here because it kinda fits the convo.

May 12, 2016 13:00:41 GMT -5 Glove Slap said:

I'm not sure if a strictly streaming only world is going to happen, but it's definitely going to swing close to that direction. I've seen posts here talk about the value of a physical product, the benefits of it and all that, but one thing you have to realize is that with every subsequent generation, the percentage that shares those views is going to shrink more and more. The people going into college now have essentially always had the option of free music, and eventually we'll have a majority that never experienced music and pop culture without streaming being the most available and ready source of music discovery. The same way that the local record shop would have been to someone several decades ago. It's just the way of the world.

The next step I can see happening is the option for longer subscriptions with slight discounts (i.e. 3-month, 6-months, and year options with upfront payments) for the longer purchases to further secure a paying audience that will stay longer. Eventually, it'll get close to the point where the easiest way to get a physical product would be just to order it for yourself directly from a distributor. They'll be specialty items and purchases. Potentially more expensive than now, but the ones who are determined to have physical products (which will largely be older people with more disposable income) will pay up. That's the natural next stop for those people after the death of the record store.

This generational progression itself isn't even that new. I saw an interview with David Bowie from 1999 where he was talking about the Internet and how unlike his generation where you had to go out and seek music, younger individuals had grown up with it all around them. It pretty much started with the expansion of radio where you could have it in your car and workplace, then leading into MTV and the expansion of cable where you could have it in the background, and ultimately the Information age.

To add, I don't see streaming consolidating to a single dominating outlet, but people will always find ways to differentiate, and there will be several options, albeit not that many. I think what Drake seems to be doing with shopping his exclusives to Apple is what big acts will do rather than something like TIDAL.

[Gary]

I don't think "peaking" means going away. This is more tied to negative growth, which will happen eventually.


The $$$ from paid subscribers which amount to most of the revenue for streaming but a smaller percentage of users (most still use for free) would need to keep up with the growth of royalty payments.

When paid membership growth starts to decline, the money needed to keep the site going will have to come from somewhere. This would be either increasing ad-rates or decreasing access to music for free members.

Another possibility would be to decrease royalty payments but then that decreases access to music which is not a good thing.

This is when growth will decline.

[godjanny]

Why does streaming have to peak? Can't it just keep expanding like the population? What would even replace it?

[MTSChart21]

May 12, 2016 23:03:52 GMT -5 godjanny said:

Why does streaming have to peak? Can't it just keep expanding like the population? What would even replace it?

Exactly

[Deleted]

Unrelated, but why is thread showing that Kurt created it? Was another thread merged and then its posts deleted? Weird.

Streaming will reach its peak when someone comes up with a superior way to consume music. That is how all forms of consumption have come to pass - from vinyl to 8-tracks to cassettes to CDs to digital to this. The main issue with physical versus digital era though, is that the industry was very much in control of the changes in physical formats. They weren't at the front of the line for digital, and because of that + being so resistant to it at first I think they lost out on the opportunity to keep the industry booming/keep the audience in a "pay" mindset the way the various physical transitions did.

But like janster said, it's hard to fathom what could outdo streaming. I'm just trying to imagine how else we could possibly get our music - I know one should never underestimate how innovating and fast-changing technology can be - I just can't wrap my mind around what else is even left.

[bornfearless2000]

When illegal downloads are no longer illegal.

[Kurt]

May 13, 2016 0:55:54 GMT -5 @antigonerising said:

Unrelated, but why is thread showing that Kurt created it? Was another thread merged and then its posts deleted? Weird.

My impact I moved the posts out of the Hot 100 thread and made a new thread with them, so it shows me as the thread creator, which is technically true.

[Wolfy]

May 13, 2016 1:02:11 GMT -5 bornfearless2000 said:

When illegal downloads are no longer illegal.

People are lazy. To illegally download an album you need to look for it, unzip the file, rename the songs to fix any errors then upload them to your devices. If you stream you instantly have access to all albums, new and old, anywhere you install the app (car, tv, phone, tablet, etc). Convenience will keep streaming alive and slow down illegal downloads. Downloading, illegal or legal, is a hassle compared to how convenient it is to stream music.

Also, I've noticed that several people that are 16-21 don't own a computer. They use a tablet or their smartphone to access the net. The ones that do have a computer they have a laptop that they use just for school. They don't download illegal music. My niece gets her music from YouTube/vevo. She just has YouTube open and listens to music on there. She doesn't even know how to open a zip file. The illegal downloads world is foreign to her. Her generation grew up having smartphones and using cloud storage. The norm for her is streaming music.

[Deleted]

^^^A friend and I complained (...yeah, yeah, I know) a year or so ago that it's actually more difficult now to illegally download something than it was when it first became a big thing, and it is also more difficult to illegally download a single track than it is to cop a whole album. We both have kind of reached the point where we have to truly be interested in you to even go through the trouble of bootlegging your stuff. Streaming makes it much easier for people to embrace the curiosity factor and check something out. Not that illegal downloading is going to go away any time soon, but it is a first-world problem type of hassle.

That said, I also doubt there will ever be a day that illegal downloads (which we should also consider as including illegal streaming, because if physical ever gets phased out there may no longer be a need for actual downloading) will be legal. There was a post in here earlier that later got moved or deleted, so I didn't get to quote it or catch who made it, though I wanna say it was either Az or Austin. But anyway, someone was saying that the problem with the 'streaming generation' is that they are so hung up on how they are used to being able to listen to music for free, that they don't recognize that it costs money to make music and there won't BE any music if no one is willing to pay for it. It's one thing to tell labels/artists to suck it up and deal with smaller profit margins, but no one is going to do this ish at a loss - even if someone loved music that much (I doubt anyone does), no one can afford to do that. Artists get shelved for that; there is no such thing as a 'loss leader' in the music industry. So no, the industry is not going to reach the point where they cave in and just give it all away for free. They'd simply fold up the shop, and we would have nothing.


I know there are plenty of people who would say, well it's just music; no one needs musicians, and "real" musicians don't need a major label to do their thing. Celebrities are overpaid and given too much rank in society anyway. Etc., etc. But try imagining a world with literally NO music. Every good movie has a score for all the key moments. Shoot, the Bible had Psalms, ok. For some reason people more or less don't respect the craft of music the way they do other artistic endeavors; not sure why that is but I think it has something to do with the intangibility of it. You can see how expensive a movie might be or lay eyes on a painting and surmise the time it took to make it, but the average person can't "hear" the price of a quality production or the gazillion rewrites and retakes behind a perfectly constructed hook. They can hear when something legit sounds bad but they are more likely to brush it off as a lack of talent than a lack of good equipment. And we need to be real and acknowledge that the majority of people do not actively seek out music, which is the real reason indie artists usually earn so little. Major labels are damn near the devil incarnate, but they're kind of a necessary evil.

I think this might be why the digital/streaming era makes me so sad sometimes, because it made an already semi-intangible art form even more intangible (and in turn, less 'valuable' to a general audience) by pushing physical product to the brink of obsolescence.

[shayonce]

I think streaming is final form of music consumption. so peak will be when cd and download are totally gone.

As someone pointed out, it's more easy to use paid or free streaming than illegal downloads nowadays. no joke.
and new generations are familiar with streaming much more than illegal downloads.

so even if free tier is gone, the streaming market will be very fine.

look at the south korea market, there's no free tier. from the day 1 , it was all paid tier.
and now over 10 years into it.. they're very fine.

[velaxti]

May 12, 2016 0:06:43 GMT -5 SPRΞΞ said:

May 11, 2016 23:27:58 GMT -5 THINKIN BOUT YOU said:

When can streaming reach its peak in America? Anyone's bold predictions?

When it stops being free.

May 13, 2016 0:12:27 GMT -5 MTSChart21 said:

May 12, 2016 23:03:52 GMT -5 godjanny said:

Why does streaming have to peak? Can't it just keep expanding like the population? What would even replace it?

Exactly

In response to "what would even replace it?" and "when it stops being free" I think in a hypothetical situation where every streaming service forces you to pay for some reason that people would go back to illegal downloading.

Unless it was a very low fee. I think people would pay a small monthly fee because illegal downloading can be a bit of a mess sometimes and you have to have storage space for thousands of files, etc. But if it's too much most people would go back to illegal downloading.

I can't actually think of a new technology that could replace streaming. I can think of variations of it, but nothing completely new.

[ilikemusic]

I actually predict it to last less than most people expect. There's no way the music industry is gonna let Spotify, which is easily the biggest one here in America, keep it's free tier, and once it's mandatory to pay for any of the services, that'll be it's peak. Illegal downloading will probably spike a bit, but like many said, the newest generation of kids most likely don't even know how to download torrents and such, they're growing up with streaming being the norm. They'll most likely just suck it up and pay the monthly fee. Digital sales will probably go up slightly, but the industry is and will always be greedy. Just like how they stopped issuing physical singles in the 90's-early 2000's to force consumers to buy the album, there is no way they're gonna continue to license their catalogs of music for free. The free-ad revenue is just not enough compared to the amount of people that use it. I even predict VEVO to start charging people in the next few years.

I don't really see the industry getting rid of CD's and downloads for a while though, not for at least another 10 years. They still contribute to a huge portion of the revenue. The industry would die if streaming was the only form of consumption. Not everyone wants to "rent" music. There could quite possibly be a new form of physical music consumption in the next few years, something like a USB stick or something that's small and easy to put into your computer.

Edit: Another possibility could entail them not necessarily removing the free streaming tier altogether, but making it extremely frustrating to use. For example, they could put 1 minute ads between each song and let the user only listen to 8-10 songs a day or something like that.

[mikolaj]

May 12, 2016 11:27:13 GMT -5 Au$tin said:

May 12, 2016 10:19:09 GMT -5 Gary said:

It will peak, just a matter of time

• Prices will go up to account for losses already incurred
• the free services will dry up because ad revenue won't be able to keep up with royalty payments
• As we are already seeing, artists will align themselves with a single service, forcing users to pick up multiple subscriptions
• 
  

I don't agree with that last bit. It didn't happen with digital sales, so I don't expect it to happen here. Eventually streaming will become too big to ignore and will become the norm to release it everywhere simultaneously like what happened with digital sales (outside of the very rare occurrence). What I see happening is more aligned with what happened with the digital sales providers. One will eventually stand out as the top dog (iTunes) while most of the others crash to exceptionally low market shares (Napster), some dying out all together (Walmart), leaving only one decent competitor (Amazon). This is exactly what will happen with streaming.

Top dog will be Spotify, YouTube Red will be Napster, TIDAL will be Walmart, and YouTube itself/Pandora (after an eventual reformat of the program to allow on demand)/Apple Music will be Amazon. And Apple Music will only continue to be a decent competitor because they already have the digital sales crown to help sustain themselves.

I don't understand how YouTube will be the 'only one decent competitor' AND the 'exceptionally low market shares.'  Care to elaborate on that? 

[Au$tin]

May 17, 2016 8:46:56 GMT -5 mikolaj said:

May 12, 2016 11:27:13 GMT -5 Au$tin said:

I don't agree with that last bit. It didn't happen with digital sales, so I don't expect it to happen here. Eventually streaming will become too big to ignore and will become the norm to release it everywhere simultaneously like what happened with digital sales (outside of the very rare occurrence). What I see happening is more aligned with what happened with the digital sales providers. One will eventually stand out as the top dog (iTunes) while most of the others crash to exceptionally low market shares (Napster), some dying out all together (Walmart), leaving only one decent competitor (Amazon). This is exactly what will happen with streaming.

Top dog will be Spotify, YouTube Red will be Napster, TIDAL will be Walmart, and YouTube itself/Pandora (after an eventual reformat of the program to allow on demand)/Apple Music will be Amazon. And Apple Music will only continue to be a decent competitor because they already have the digital sales crown to help sustain themselves.

I don't understand how YouTube will be the 'only one decent competitor' AND the 'exceptionally low market shares.'  Care to elaborate on that? 

YouTube Red the subscription based app and YouTube the original website.

[YourFaveIsAFlop]

May 14, 2016 17:19:19 GMT -5 ilikemusic said:

Edit: Another possibility could entail them not necessarily removing the free streaming tier altogether, but making it extremely frustrating to use. For example, they could put 1 minute ads between each song and let the user only listen to 8-10 songs a day or something like that.

I think daily caps will be coming soon.

[Deleted]

May 14, 2016 17:19:19 GMT -5 ilikemusic said:

Edit: Another possibility could entail them not necessarily removing the free streaming tier altogether, but making it extremely frustrating to use. For example, they could put 1 minute ads between each song and let the user only listen to 8-10 songs a day or something like that.

It's been a long time since I've used Spotify for free, but they were kind of already doing the bolded anyway. The ads would come up up every after every second or third song and sometimes there would be multiple ads played in a row. It was annoying as hell...but I don't think that would drive your typical cheapskate to pay just to get rid of commercials. I'm not entirely sure a daily cap would either; if restricted too much, a person could just as easily turn to Pandora or similar internet radio service, and then they might not return to Spotify at all.

My sister still uses the freemium tier and she is always complaining about how ass Spotify's mobile and desktop apps are. I never have the problems she does and I have suggested to her that they're purposely making the free app difficult to work with precisely because it is the free tier, but I have no way of knowing if other free users have these same issues. And regardless, for her it only justifies her reasons for not paying. Who wants to cough up money for something that o her, has already shown itself to be a flawed product, you know.

Taking away the repeat button and/or the ability to save playlists might be the key - it's not a 'cap' per se and technically does not take away the on-demand aspect, but having to click the play button or hop from artist page to artist page whenever you want to listen to another song might be enough to encourage some people to pay up. I know when I was considering checking out other streaming services my biggest reservation was that I would have to rebuild all of my playlists, and I think that is something I saw come up when people were talking about whether or not they'd move to Apple Music. Even Prince, when he yanked his music from all but Tidal, alluded to this - people getting upset because they "lost" their playlists. They feel like they own the music even though they really don't.

[mikolaj]

May 17, 2016 9:17:38 GMT -5 Au$tin said:

May 17, 2016 8:46:56 GMT -5 mikolaj said:

I don't understand how YouTube will be the 'only one decent competitor' AND the 'exceptionally low market shares.'  Care to elaborate on that? 

YouTube Red the subscription based app and YouTube the original website.

I think you're misunderstanding what YouTube Red is.  YouTube Red is purely an extension of YouTube.  Pretty much all it does is remove ads from YouTube. 

[Au$tin]

May 17, 2016 15:12:04 GMT -5 mikolaj said:

May 17, 2016 9:17:38 GMT -5 Au$tin said:

YouTube Red the subscription based app and YouTube the original website.

I think you're misunderstanding what YouTube Red is.  YouTube Red is purely an extension of YouTube.  Pretty much all it does is remove ads from YouTube. 

No, I am not misunderstanding it at all. YouTube Red is an exterminator, yes, but the app itself is a subscription type streaming service. YouTube is not. They both access the same music videos. YouTube Red can die without YouTube itself being affected since the app has a different number of subscribers and people paying into it than YouTube. If no one gets that specific app, that specific app will die. That was what I was posting about.

It's like if we had an app that exclusively opened Pulse, but you had to pay for it. Then you also had a free ProBoards app. The Pulse app would die because you could still access Pulse from the free overall app. The Pulse app would wither away and profits for it specifically go away. The ProBoards app, however, still continues to thrive in this scenario.

[mikolaj]

May 17, 2016 16:15:55 GMT -5 Au$tin said:

May 17, 2016 15:12:04 GMT -5 mikolaj said:

I think you're misunderstanding what YouTube Red is.  YouTube Red is purely an extension of YouTube.  Pretty much all it does is remove ads from YouTube. 

No, I am not misunderstanding it at all. YouTube Red is an exterminator, yes, but the app itself is a subscription type streaming service. YouTube is not. They both access the same music videos. YouTube Red can die without YouTube itself being affected since the app has a different number of subscribers and people paying into it than YouTube. If no one gets that specific app, that specific app will die. That was what I was posting about.

It's like if we had an app that exclusively opened Pulse, but you had to pay for it. Then you also had a free ProBoards app. The Pulse app would die because you could still access Pulse from the free overall app. The Pulse app would wither away and profits for it specifically go away. The ProBoards app, however, still continues to thrive in this scenario.

It's the same app, though, so you are misunderstanding it... having the subscriptions just opens up features that weren't available before IN the existing app (background playback, add-free viewing).

EDIT: Also, having YouTube Red gives you a free subscription to Google Music Unlimited, and vice versa.  

[ry4n]

But adblock exists. So that makes paying to remove ads on YouTube useless.

[ilikemusic]

May 17, 2016 13:56:54 GMT -5 @antigonerising said:

May 14, 2016 17:19:19 GMT -5 ilikemusic said:

Edit: Another possibility could entail them not necessarily removing the free streaming tier altogether, but making it extremely frustrating to use. For example, they could put 1 minute ads between each song and let the user only listen to 8-10 songs a day or something like that.

Taking away the repeat button and/or the ability to save playlists might be the key - it's not a 'cap' per se and technically does not take away the on-demand aspect, but having to click the play button or hop from artist page to artist page whenever you want to listen to another song might be enough to encourage some people to pay up. I know when I was considering checking out other streaming services my biggest reservation was that I would have to rebuild all of my playlists, and I think that is something I saw come up when people were talking about whether or not they'd move to Apple Music. Even Prince, when he yanked his music from all but Tidal, alluded to this - people getting upset because they "lost" their playlists. They feel like they own the music even though they really don't.

That makes sense. Most of my friends who use Spotify would be completely lost if it weren't for their playlists. As the entertainment industry moves closer and closer to being completely digital, I feel like there's definitely going to be a lot of change. Especially for music, I honestly predict some artist won't upload their music videos to YouTube via VEVO anymore, it'll probably only be on the VEVO website, which like I said before, consumers are going to be eventually forced to start playing. I wouldn't be surprised if they added an audio streaming service as well to compete with Tidal and Apple Music.. I don't think Spotify offers music videos but I could be mistaken.

Also, as far as the iTunes store goes, another prediction I have is that considering digital single downloads have little to impact on the charts nowadays, the digital retailers might be persuaded to remove the feature of buying songs individually, in hopes that people will just buy the entire album if they've heard it on streaming services and like it enough.