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Warner Music Earned More Revenue From Streaming Services Than Downloads in Q2 2015

I don't subscribe to streaming music for the same reason I don't subscribe to cable TV:
- it's continuous money down the drain with nothing to show for it
- most of the content is junk
- there are free ways to find new good quality content
- if there is something that is good quality, I can buy it once on physical media at the highest quality and never worry about it being unavailable, restricted, or taken away from me.

But that's just me.
 
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Revearti said:
I like buying music. I'll be doing it for a while. There is something about having it that I can't leave, yet.

For instance, I want to know the album I'm listening to now will be there in five or ten years for nostalgic purposes. I wish with all of our server farms, we would just leave media in the cloud forever without the worry that it may not be there one day due to a contract.

When it's accessible forever, I'll be more excited about embracing streaming as a replacement. Until then, I'll stick with being old fashioned. :)
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I agree, especially with Apple removing a lot of content. There's 6 movies I downloaded that no longer exist.
 
oneMadRssn said:
It's not so much the owning, it's more the not paying in perpetuity.
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This. Streaming is a perfect fiscal model for content providers. You have access only as long as you keep coughing up the cash (or keep listening to the constant ads). And it's only good when you have a reliable cloud connection. The brave new world continues to bear fruit for the big corporations.
 
Warner Music Earned More Revenue From Streaming Services Than Downloads in Q2 2015


...and still a lot of people criticize services like Spotify at every chance they get.
 
oneMadRssn said:
It's not so much the owning, it's more the not paying in perpetuity.
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But ...
  1. For the cost of a single album download, you're getting a month of access to literally millions of albums you can play on demand, not just access in perpetuity for one album.
  2. You only have to pay the for periods where you want access. You could stop subscribing for five years, then decide you want to listen to albums X, Y, and Z for the next month, and only pay for that month rather than the previous five years.
 
owning music

I am one of the folks who likes to listen - mostly - to my own collection.

But it's bigger than 25,000 songs so I can't use iTunes Match. And I would rather not stream it anyway because you need a big data plan and good cell coverage for that.

What I would like is a selection mechanism - similar to iTunes Radio - but that worked from the collection on my iPhone (or Mac, when I'm at home). Genius is a step in that direction but much too small. Far better to have a mechanism where iTunes Radio/Genius/new service creates a playlist and send it to my phone - which then plays the items it has (skipping the ones I don't have).

That would be really cool. Better quality (no dropouts) plus low data consumption.

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thekeyring said:
Excited for WWDC. ... just maybe a new 15'' MacBook Pro. Have I missed anything?
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Yep. The part about no new 15" MBP until Intel gets its act together on quad-core CPUs.
 
Gameboy70 said:
But ...
  1. For the cost of a single album download, you're getting a month of access to literally millions of albums you can play on demand, not just access in perpetuity for one album.
  2. You only have to pay the for periods where you want access. You could stop subscribing for five years, then decide you want to listen to albums X, Y, and Z for the next month, and only pay for that month rather than the previous five years.
Click to expand...

I cannot imagine how sad a month without music would be. For me, and probably anyone who derives happiness from music, we would essentially be locked into paying this monthly fee for life if we transitioned all their music and playlists to it.

That said, I think the old Zune Music Pass was the best model for consumers. $10/month, unlimited streming and offline listening, and the choice of 5 songs per month to actually own and keep forever. Too bad is was exlusive to Zune players and Windows phones, and had terrible marketing. Ah well.
 
thekeyring said:
Excited for WWDC. Streaming music service, TV update + TV service, iOS 9, OS X 10.11, and maybe, just maybe a new 15'' MacBook Pro. Have I missed anything?
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Except WWDC is a Developers Conference. It's about software not hardware, and it's about letting Developers know what's coming so they can get ready for it when it's released. So while I share your wish list I seriously doubt you'll see any AppleTV update, and no MacBook Pro. While the other things on your list, OS updates, services etc, might be announced, they won't be available to the rest of us until the fall.
 
McCool71 said:
Warner Music Earned More Revenue From Streaming Services Than Downloads in Q2 2015


...and still a lot of people criticize services like Spotify at every chance they get.
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Yup, because Spotify is not the music industry's saving grace. In a world of increased music consumption, with more people enjoying music than ever before in history, where EVERYONE has a collection in their pocket, revenues are so far down, it's ludicrous.

Here:
500px-GlobrecC1.png
 
John.B said:
Nice for Warner, I guess. And how much was the musicians' cut?
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I was under the impression labels generally had a fixed percentage that they gave musicians? Not the same percentage to every musician, of course, but I figured it would be the same across platforms. So whether they're streamed or downloaded, the artist gets 30% (for example) of what the label gets.

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dnn said:
Yup, because Spotify is not the music industry's saving grace. In a world of increased music consumption, with more people enjoying music than ever before in history, where EVERYONE has a collection in their pocket, revenues are so far down, it's ludicrous.

Here:
Image
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It looks like physical has been on a steady downward trend for over a decade now. Spotify definitely didn't cause that - it hasn't existed long enough to cause it. I'd say iTunes did, since the iTunes Store started up about when sales started falling.
 
I have no interest in paying for a streaming music service. If the revamped Beats service doesn't give sufficient free content, then I'm staying with Spotify.

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subjonas said:
I don't subscribe to streaming music for the same reason I don't subscribe to cable TV:
- it's continuous money down the drain with nothing to show for it
- most of the content is junk
- there are free ways to find new good quality content
- if there is something that is good quality, I can buy it on physical media and never worry about it being unavailable, restricted, or taken away from me.

But that's just me.
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Nope, it's not just you. I feel the same. Music just isn't important enough for me to pay for it on a monthly basis.
 
Benjamin Frost said:
I would rather own my own music.

Perhaps the reason why sales are so low is because there is precious little good new music these days. If Apple promote streaming, it will simply mean that there will be even less good new music.

Let's not forget that history judges most music of any era as sub-par. Happily, there's plenty of music from 26 to 400 years ago which has stood the test of time.
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I just have to ask, didn't you just contradict yourself there? No good music these days. History tells us all music of any era is sub par. Therefore....now is no different than any other time? -mind boggles-
Actually, I do agree with you and history. But this "no good music today" trope is so bogus. The reason older music may sound more appealing is that only the best hangs around to be compared to. There are plenty of dog songs from any era. I give you MacArthur Park and Me and Bobby McGee (Janis Joplin version).
There is a lot of great music out there (e.g.Fitz and the Tantrums. And I am not even in their age demographic.) Just got to look for it and appreciate it. There is no golden age. ;)

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Harmonious Zen said:
Music just isn't important enough for me to pay for it on a monthly basis.
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I think most of subjonas's list is debatable. I disagree with a lot of it. But I do agree with you here. It's not the money. It's the time. Podcasts eat up most of my listening time. Yet -another- monthly payment for music just doesn't make sense to me. It is for this reason that I really like Apple radio. I won't be subscribing to a subscription sevrice if they do away with it.
 
oneMadRssn said:
I cannot imagine how sad a month without music would be. For me, and probably anyone who derives happiness from music, we would essentially be locked into paying this monthly fee for life if we transitioned all their music and playlists to it.

That said, I think the old Zune Music Pass was the best model for consumers. $10/month, unlimited streming and offline listening, and the choice of 5 songs per month to actually own and keep forever. Too bad is was exlusive to Zune players and Windows phones, and had terrible marketing. Ah well.
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I'd call the ability to have the vast majority of the world's recorded music at your fingertips for $10 a month a privilege, not a prison. Besides, access and ownership aren't mutually exclusive. There's no reason you couldn't use a streaming service for discovery and just buy the keepers.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
It looks like physical has been on a steady downward trend for over a decade now. Spotify definitely didn't cause that - it hasn't existed long enough to cause it. I'd say iTunes did, since the iTunes Store started up about when sales started falling.
Click to expand...

Look even further back and you'll find that the founder/owner of Spotify, Daniel Elk, was also the founder of a piracy site, so in effect he helped create the situation of the devaluing of music through piracy and then had the audacity to launch a pay site to help "save" the music industry. He has become very wealthy through both of those ventures.

See the contrast...

Here's an example of an extremely successful independent artist - Zoe Keating.
In 9 months on Spotify, she had 444,202 streams and was paid $1916
.
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/12/05/successful-indie-artist-actually-makes-spotify
.
She would only have to sell around 275 albums worldwide in the same period to make the same money that Spotify paid her for all those streams.
.
What artists are saying is that Spotify's entire monetary system is not good enough (also the free tier should be removed) and the real winners are Spotify's owners.
.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2135424/Spotify-music-guru-earns-190MILLION-age-29--company-just-years-old.html
 
The big problem is that if people don't feel like the music is worth the money then that's how it's valued, just like anything else. The market decides what something is worth. And currently most people feel like it's not worth $9.99 a month.
 
Daalseth said:
Except WWDC is a Developers Conference. It's about software not hardware, and it's about letting Developers know what's coming so they can get ready for it when it's released. So while I share your wish list I seriously doubt you'll see any AppleTV update, and no MacBook Pro. While the other things on your list, OS updates, services etc, might be announced, they won't be available to the rest of us until the fall.
Click to expand...

Looking back at the last decade there has always been at least one major hardware announcement at WWDC. New 15” Pro and/or Apple TV are certainly in the relm of possibilities.
 
dnn said:
Look even further back and you'll find that the founder/owner of Spotify, Daniel Elk, was also the founder of a piracy site, so in effect he helped create the situation of the devaluing of music through piracy and then had the audacity to launch a pay site to help "save" the music industry. He has become very wealthy through both of those ventures.

See the contrast...

Here's an example of an extremely successful independent artist - Zoe Keating.
In 9 months on Spotify, she had 444,202 streams and was paid $1916
.
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/12/05/successful-indie-artist-actually-makes-spotify
.
She would only have to sell around 275 albums worldwide in the same period to make the same money that Spotify paid her for all those streams.
.
What artists are saying is that Spotify's entire monetary system is not good enough (also the free tier should be removed) and the real winners are Spotify's owners.
.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2135424/Spotify-music-guru-earns-190MILLION-age-29--company-just-years-old.html
Click to expand...

This agan. Almost never ever is a stream equal to a purchase. That is just bull to equalize them. Also the labels take more than 60% av the revenue from streaming. So for the label streaming is good for the artist that can't live with his or hers contract bitch and moan about their customers. Get real or get stuffed. It's a new product giving more revenue than just your old, be thankful for the new stream. Also, Zoe keating gets revenue from every MB of memory in anything in sweden so no they have no bad deal here.
 
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Tomorrow i´m gonna buy a 6 months Spotify card for the win ;) Google play music wasn't good enough.
 
Frosties said:
This agan. Almost never ever is a stream equal to a purchase. That is just bull to equalize them. Also the labels take more than 60% av the revenue from streaming. So for the label streaming is good for the artist that can't live with his or hers contract bitch and moan about their customers. Get real or get stuffed. It's a new product giving more revenue than just your old, be thankful for the new stream. Also, Zoe keating gets revenue from every MB of memory in anything in sweden so no they have no bad deal here.
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Hey I'm just pointing out some facts.
Yes, there is a transition going on, but it doesn't mean the music industry is healthy. It's a shell of it's former self. It's dropped over half of it's revenue since 2000. Daniel Elk, Spotify founder, was also a master pirateer and now he's plundering the spoils.

It ain't hard to find all the info about that online. ;)
 
thekeyring said:
It's why my parents always bought vinyl records and never, ever listened to the radio. </s>
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The man doesn't like the idea that to listen to music you have to subscribe and pay monthly/annually. What's so funny about that?

Neither do I as a matter of fact. I try to keep my subscriptions to the minimum (just my phone). I can still listen to radio and buy music I like. For me it's more better this way and cheaper.
 
That's bloody surprising - more streaming revenue than downloads - given the pittance that streaming gives out to people.

I won't ever be a fan of any streaming service. May make use of it, Apple's given ease of use, but buying or downloading things is my main priority.
 
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