NPR wonders how are listening future will look like, taking two of the biggest services as examples: "Spotify and Bandcamp could not be more opposite. Where Spotify highlights playlists, most often of its own creation, Bandcamp sticks to the album. Where Spotify pays royalties according to little-understood formulas that can only be analyzed by reverse calculation, Bandcamp lets artists and labels choose their own prices. Where Spotify requires working through a limited number of distributors to access their services, Bandcamp is open to anyone. Where Spotify has revenue streams dependent on ads and data, Bandcamp operates on a simple revenue share with artists and collects no information on its users".

U.S. residents have listened to an average of 11.1% more country since mid-March, and country music streaming climbed 22.4% in the final full week of May. Bloomberg explains: some have argued it is comfort food at a time when people are craving any form of succor; an executive at Pandora, the online radio service, noted country music is a perfect complement to drinking (alcohol sales have soared during the pandemic); country fans are learning to stream.

Google Play Music is going to be fully shut down later this years, which means YouTube will be the only streaming music option from the company. Google Play Music has been a very easy way to upload CDs and purchased music from other platforms into a single cloud, accessible anywhere. Google says now they would be rolling out a new, simple way for users of its Play Music offering to transfer files over to YouTube Music. AJOMT analyzes what happens next...

In the first two months of social distancing, American listeners largely gravitated toward the acoustic genres - singer-songwriter classics and country, Rolling Stone reports. Streaming data show that, in general, Americans have gravitated away from electric and electronic genres. Streams for pop fell 16 percent, dance music streams fell 11 percent, hip-hop decreased 15 percent, hard rock and metal fell 10 percent, while arena rock tumbled 23 percent. Country music has seen an 8 percent growth in streams, singer-songwriter music was up 8 percent, soft rock was up 5 percent, and roots rock 4 percent. In general, on-demand audio streams in the U.S. dipped eight percent from March 13th through May 7th compared with the previous two months.

CMU published a two-part podcast where they examine the debate around the fairness of streaming royalties for artists and songwriters (part 1, part 2). They discuss the subscription prices, how much is a million streams really, user-centric royalty distribution etc.

"The current situation is going to dramatically change the music business, as a huge accelerator of user behavior on the digital side" - Denis Ladegaillerie from the big French distribution company Believe wrote in Music Business Worldwide. He added - "we are making the assumption when physical sales return in September, they will return at levels that are 50% lower than they were pre-this crisis... Yet, on the plus side, because of this expected change in user behavior, we are expecting a substantial surge in online digital usage. This could accelerate a physical-to-digital music consumer transition... Believe’s key message to artists and labels today is to try to make the best out of this situation by accelerating your knowledge of the digital business in response to the likelihood that you will be a more digital artist at the end of this".

The big lockdown is changing what Americans are streaming these days, Quartz reports - the R'n'B singer Romeo Santos saw the largest dip of about 25%, followed by rapper Daddy Yankee with a 24% dip, and pop-metal collective Slipknot with a 23% fall (beginning of March compared to the beginning of April). On the other side, there's Kidz Bop, a band that makes versions of pop hits sung by children with lyrics modified for kids, who saw a jump of about 10%, with singer-songwriters Jack Johnson (performing children's music occasionally) and Mad DeMarco rising 9%. In genres, Latino saw the biggest dip of 26%, followed by rap which fell 20%, pop fell 17%, dance 13%, rock 9%, jazz 7%, reggae 6%. Religious music fell 5,6%, R'n'b' fell 4,8%, and country music 0,2%. Three genres saw a rise in streams in the US - classical was up 0,3%, folk 1,7%, with children's music being the biggest gainer - 9,7%.

Not all streamed or downloaded music needs to be of low quality - Rolling Stone offers advice on how to get the high-quality resolution. First, you need a good digital analog converter (DAC) - it’s the component that converts digital files into sound. It's there in computers, tablets, phones, TVs, and stereo receivers, but not all of them support high-resolution audio files. Rolling Stone also recommends a few high-resolution streaming services, and places to download high-resolution music.

Denis Ladegaillerie from one of the biggest players in the global record industry, Paris-based Believe shared some advice with Music Business Worldwide for artists waiting in the shadow of the big lockdown: "If you are an artist who is digitally-driven with a very strong fanbase, it’s actually in your interest to release rapidly right now. That’s especially true if you’re an independent artist because, as major labels are postponing a lot of big releases. With fewer new big releases, artists releasing music during a quiet time benefit. If they have strong and engaged fanbases, they benefit even more". Believe’s own, recently-released Creative Marketing Playbook is packed with further guidance for artists right now.

In the March 13-19 week streaming in the U.S. was down 7,6%, although more or less everyone is at home, so it was to be expected for streaming to jump. However, label executives are neither startled nor concerned by the drop, as the Variety reports - they say it’s down to focus on news and other televised options; the loss of daily commutes, where many people stream music; and multiple people at home together streaming the same things.

Musicians are calling on Spotify to triple its royalty rates following the coronavirus pandemic causing tours cancellations all over the world, the Guardian reports. An online petition posted by musician Evan Greer asked Spotify to triple its rates permanently - it is widely believed that Spotify pays artists about $0.00318 per stream, meaning that a rights holder would receive $3.18 (£2.74) per 1,000 streams.

Cherie Hu has made virtual music events directory, a comprehensive, up-to-date resource for anyone seeking guidance on how to stage alternative music events in this moment of significant upheaval for the industry. Slightly smaller, but it deserves a sentence - Boston Globe has put together a list of classical live streams. Similarly, Music Scholarship at a Distance offers daily free lectures at 4 PM EST.

Wired doesn't like how music sounds through Alexa loudspeakers and argues in favor of listening to some music - classical and classic rock in particular - on a CD, rather than streaming, for a simple reason - sound quality: "The zany operatics of all tempestuous evergreen musicians—you just gotta let them fly. Big emotions need big sonic landscapes. Loud bass is fine when you have your life together, but where would we be without the wide-ranging dynamics that alone can give voice—and thus solace—to the bipolar youth in ecstatic anguish?".

The U.S. recorded music business generated $11.1 billion in revenue in 2019, a 13% year-over-year increase from the $9.8 billion it reached in 2018, and the fourth straight year of double-digit growth for the sector. Streaming revenue grew 19.9% year-over-year to $8.8 billion from 2018's $7.4 billion, accounting for 79.5% of all revenue. On the other side, digital download sales revenue dipped below the $1 billion mark, falling 18% year-over-year to $856 million, CD sales fell 12% to $615 million in 2019, but vinyl rose a whopping 19% year-over-year to $504 million, the format's highest revenues in 32 years and its 14th straight year of growth.

Universal Music Group generated €921m, or $1.02bn, in recorded music streaming revenues in the last quarter od 2019, and it's overall revenues in 2019 – across recorded music, publishing and other activities – hit €7.16bn ($8.04bn), according to Music Business Worldwide. That revenue number was up 14.0% year-on-year at constant currency and perimeter, recorded music streaming revenues leapt up by 21.5% in calendar 2019 to €3.33bn ($3.73bn). This means that streaming contributed some 59.1% of UMG’s total recorded music revenues in 2019, and physical recorded music revenues also grew in 2019 - up 3.1% year-on-year to €1.01bn ($1.14bn). Biggest money-makers: Billie Eilish, Post Malone, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, and 'A Star Is Born' OST.

"The mobile experience of Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal and YouTube Music are all built in a way where unless one seeks out playlists created by friends, it’d be easy to be completely oblivious to their own musical tastes. Why, with so many music streaming platforms, we’ve arrived at a fairly flat and isolated way of experiencing music" - Penny Fractions asks in an excellent article about the social context of streaming media.

Society is shifting from ownership to access in other spheres too: movies, software, cars, even mobile phones. Perhaps I need to shift my mindset and embrace the loss of certainty and control. Accept that the lesson of on-demand music streaming could be, paradoxically, that you can’t have everything you want, exactly how and when you want it - Guardian's journalist writes about our need to own the things we love. Which we, obviously, don't have to. But we still do.

Music, like pretty much everything else, is caught up in petro-capitalism. Vinyl records, as well as cassettes and CDs, are oil products that have been made and destroyed by the billion since the mid-20th century. Is rejecting physical media and embracing streaming the answer? No, because digital media is physical media, too. Digital audio files rely on infrastructures of data storage, processing and transmission that have potentially higher greenhouse gas emissions than the petrochemical plastics – to stream music is to burn coal, uranium and gas.

US music fans streamed more than 1 trillion songs on demand for the first time in 2019, that's around 3 billion streams a day, or, roughly, nine streams per day per person. On-demand stream consumption now represents 85% of all music consumption in the United States

Unlimited access to a catalog of 50 million songs for $10 is how much music-streaming subscriptions have cost their entire existence, but next year that might change, Rolling Stone is speculating. The first reason - Spotify recently entered its second decade of existence towing 250 million users, 110 million of whom are paying subscribers; when […]

34 percent of music listeners between 16 and 24 years old use stream ripping apps or services to listen to music illegally, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry says in its annual report. The report also noted that 38 percent of the younger demographic had used illegal means of listening in the last month, […]

Amazon has launched a high definition, “lossless audio” service Amazon Music HD with 50 million songs available in CD quality. The service is available now in the US, UK, Germany, and Japan for $14.99 per month, or $12.99 a month for Amazon Prime subscribers. This makes Amazon the first of the three streaming titans to offer high-fidelity […]

"I don’t use Spotify. I think all those streaming services are… the new MTV, the new gatekeepers... they’re all just ripping everyone off. You can have your online existence, but trying to suck on Spotify’s sweet sweetness is just a waste of time for me" Julian Casablancas says in a Billboard interview. The way he […]

Greenhouse gas emissions caused by music consumption have reached an unprecedented high, a new study from the University of Glasgow shows. Storing and processing music online uses a tremendous amount of resources and energy—which has a high impact on the environment. While 140 million kilograms of GHGs were generated in 1977, 136 million kilograms in […]