Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Music From The Clouds (Digging Deeper)

Personally, I am a huge fan of Spotify, Pandora etc.  However, I also buy all of my music on iTunes as well.  A few years ago, many bands and artists still relied on album sales as a key source of revenue, but that has all but disappeared in today's day and age due to new music platform companies.  There is a fairly new company based out of London called Omniphone, a lot like Spotify.  Their music platform provides over 22 million song tracks to 28 total countries world wide.  Their business is booming.  They just reported an increase of 118% in revenue this past year and are continuing to grow. You can check out the article here.  Now, do we think this is a good thing for artists, bands, etc or a bad thing?  There are several different ways a person can look at this issue.  Although the bands do have a decrease in album revenue, the music platform companies offer enormous amounts of exposure for up-and-coming bands as well as established bands.  I'm going to use Spotify as an example.  The software is incredibly easy to use.  For every band you listen to, there is a tab to the side that lists several bands similar to the one you are listening to.  I have discovered many bands that I had no clue about.  Now that I said that, you might say "Well, you discovered a new band on Spotify, that doesn't benefit the new band you found because you aren't buying their music."  In my case, wrong.  I go straight to iTunes and buy the song I like, and I'm sure this is still the case with tons of people.  Another thing that happens when I discover a new band on Spotify is go straight to their website to see if they have any tour dates in my area, and what do I do when I attend a concert?  I buy merchandise.  Spotify does pay royalties to the artists, but if you are not a big name band, it is really not much at all. Here is the article about the pay from a musicians prospective.  In the "big picture" of things, I believe these "cloud" companies such as Spotify, Pandora, Omniphone, etc. greatly expand the economy of the music industry and open up doors for many artists and bands despite their decreased revenue in album sales.

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