Page 5 - Edge: Issue 6 March/April 2019

Dream to Stream
WStreaming services continue to grow in popularity
hen the once popular music of music was down by 20.5%. Less sharing service Napster rose people are paying to download music in 1999, it changed the way now and instead using a streaming
Story By Logan Saldana
from their songs being passed around. Streaming services pay the artist (and the music label) every time a song is streamed.
In 2017, the revenue from streaming was higher than the revenue from physical CD sales for the first time in history. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), by 2018, 75% of the revenue coming into the music industry came from streaming, while only 10% came from CD sales, and 12% from digital downloads.
Clearly, the way we listen to music today has changed, and streaming seems to be the path forward.
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people felt about music. Napster was an online service that allowed users to upload and share music they had previously purchased. Once these tracks were uploaded, they became available for the whole platform of users to download and listen to. Of course there were some legal issues that arose as the website gained popularity. The landscape of online music has transformed since then.
Though Apple Music and Spotify may be the most popular of the music streaming services, today there are plenty of other options to choose from. As the music streaming services rose in popularity more and more platforms have come into fruition.. Today these services include Amazon Music Unlimited, Pandora, SoundCloud and even YouTube Music
“I have Pandora Premium, it may be a less popular streaming service but it works just as well as the others.” Mayghan Lee, 8, said. “I like being able to listen to most songs and radio stations that provide a lot of different songs based on what I’ve been listening to.”
In 2017 the paid download revenue
service. However, the 2018 Global Music Report states that as of 2017 there was a 41.1% growth in streaming revenue. As for physical revenue, it was down by 5.4%. All of this adds up to give streaming services an overall 45.5% rise in paid subscriptions.
“I’ve been using Spotify for around a year and that’s how I download my music now,” Lana Schmadeke, 8, said.
Streaming services accounted for over 38% of the music industries revenue in 2017. The services came in with near 176 million paid subscription accounts. Spotify alone ended 2017 with 157 million active users, 71 million of those being paid subscribers.
“I like Apple Music because of its amazing services,” Alexis Halbert, 8, said. “I can download as many songs as I want, and share them with my friends.” Apple Music has a feature in which users can send play lists and share songs between each other and it has become quite common among users.
Streaming services have led to a resurgence of the music industry. When people were using “free” services such as Napster, the artists made nothing