Digitalization Revolution: Spotify

Digitalization Revolution

Alec Ripp

The music industry has gone through some major changes economically in the past two decades due to the increased use of computers and the internet. Illegal downloads and digitalization of music on platforms like iTunes kicked off the  rapid decrease in purchased music. In 2013-2014 CD sales dropped by 15%. We have been moving on from a physical copy of albums for over a decade now, but in the past few years, there has been a 13% decrease in Digital track purchases. Illegal downloads have also caused a major decrease in profit for artists and labels. In 2008 more than half of the music downloaded was pirated and in 2009 30 billion songs were illegally downloaded. During this same time frame pirating music became more popular because of it’s simplicity. Google has done a good job of eliminating the most used illegal downloading websites in the past decade, which has helped push music listeners to use music streaming platforms such as Youtube, Soundcloud, and Spotify.

It’s hard to imagine how artists can make so much money still, when such a small percentage of people pay for albums. These music listening platforms have given artists like Drake the  opportunity to reach billions of streams. Drake’s was streamed more than 4.7bn times on Spotify last year, and every hour, his songs are streamed more than 500,000 times on the app.  So despite the decrease in actual purchases of the album, Drake is still brings in the cash from music streaming. Spotify stated they pay their artists royalties on average about $0.05 per stream, therefore with 4.7 billion streams in 2016, Drake has received an estimated $33,840,000.  

Streaming revenues are expected to double in the next few years. Artists are getting more recognition than ever before because of the simplicity of online music streaming. The most used streaming app Spotify gives consumers the option of free use, or a monthly subscription at a cost of $15 monthly. The incentives for consumers subscriptions are no advertisements, exclusive tracks, and having the option to stream music without using data.

Spotify executive Troy Carter revealed that Spotify had passed 39 million paying subscribers.That more than doubles Apple Music’s estimated 17 million.

Artists are getting more recognition than ever before due to the ease of streaming music. There's never been a better time for artists to get their music heard. With the help of social media, artists have been able to connect with fans on a much larger level. Competition in the industry has risen greatly because of the publicity given to artists on twitter. Subsequently,  demand has increased and will continue to grow exponentially with social media.

Works Cited

Camp, Gregory. "Spotify. https://www.spotify.com/. Retrieved 21 January 2015." Journal of the Society for American Music 9.03 (2015): 375-78. Web. 26 Apr. 2017.

"Financial Times.". N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2017.

Adejobi, Alicia. "How much has Drake earned from Spotify with 4.7 billion streams?" International Business Times UK. N.p., 01 Dec. 2016. Web. 26 Apr. 2017.

Share this post