Spotify Stays Changing the Game

David Pierce/WIRED

Over the past 10 years, the music industry has changed tremendously. Believe it or not, there was actually a time where you had to buy all the music you want to listen to. However, long gone are the days where you had to go out and purchase vinyl records, new CDs, or even songs on iTunes. Streaming services such as Spotify have not only altered the way artists make money, but it has also altered the way songs themselves are created.

The rise of streaming services over the past few years is very apparent, however, you may have underestimated just how much the industry now relies on streaming to make money. In 2019, streaming services account for 80% of the total industry revenue, while digital sales only account for 8.6%. This may not be very alarming since younger listeners, such as myself, exclusively use apps such as Spotify or Apple Music to listen to music. On the surface, there isn’t a real issue with the transition from analog to digital, but the way an artist is paid for their work is immensely different. A new CD costs about $20 on average and most new songs on iTunes are $1.29. For streaming services, the average pay rate per stream is .007 cents. With this rate in mind, a song would have to be streamed about 185 times to equal one sale at a $1.29 per song. Maybe you are thinking that it will even out since songs can accumulate over a billion streams, such as Shape of You by Ed Sheeran, but huge streaming numbers are usually only for very popular artists.

Overall, the payout for streams is much lower than that of real sales such as downloads, but they are also even lower once the profits have been divided among the artist, record label, producers, and writers of the song. So even if you think it is more convenient to use a streaming service such as Spotify, it does result in a much smaller paycheck for artists.

Spotify has also fundamentally changed how artists go about creating songs. The idea of the “Spotify sound”, meaning that hit songs on Spotify have a distinct sound to them, has been talked about in recent years. One of my favorite series, Sound Field, goes into depth about what can be considered the key elements of the “Spotify sound”, such as being around 3 minutes in length, having a danceable beat and catchy chorus, and having an interesting hook to engage listeners quickly.

When looking at the top streamed songs on Spotify, a lot of these characteristics can be found in the top songs. For example, the second most-streamed song, One Dance by Drake, is under 3 minutes long, has a danceable beat and catchy chorus, and has a quick intro before the lyrics start. But why do these elements exist? In the case of 3-minute songs, there is a clear explanation, the 30-second rule. For a stream to count as being listened to, a user has to listen to at least 30 seconds of the song. So, if an artist gets paid within the first 30 seconds, there is no reason to make a 5- or 6-minute song. Using the example of One Dance again, the chorus of the song starts at the 30-second mark so if you make it to the catchy chorus, it will count as a stream of the song.

Spotify has transformed music in more ways than one. But what does this mean for the future of music? Will we ever revert to the sale of music instead of streams? Will all top streamed songs be different variations of the same format? Let me know what you think about the future of the industry concerning streaming services and where it will head next.

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