The Value of Music in the Age of Streaming
If there has been an overarching theme to discussions about music in 2014, one that has implicitly or explicitly cast its shadow over the largest patch of music-critical discourse for the year, then that overarching theme is the streaming economy. While Spotify and its competitors (Pandora and Grooveshark among them) have existed for a few years now—practically aeons in internet time—it is only recently that their impact on patterns of musical consumption and on musicians’ and labels’ revenues has truly begun to be felt. Spotify was already the subject of controversy well before mid-2013 when Thom Yorke called it “the last desperate fart of a dying corpse”, and focus on the streaming service has only intensified since. Most recently, Taylor Swift removed her new album 1989 and her back catalogue from Spotify in response to the fact that she and her management couldn’t restrict streams of 1989 to Spotify’s paying subscribers.
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