The two recent big things in streaming and why they matter
Two big things in streaming happened on Friday 2ndAugust. First, after years of stubbornness, my favourite enigmatic prog-rockband Tool finally joined the world of commercial streaming, releasing theirfour studio albums on Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play. Secondly, Canadianrapper Drake released a compilation album comprising some of his better known‘loosies’, which are songs not part of an LP or available for purchase orcommercial streaming.
Admittedly, outside of music publications, musiciansreleasing their music through digital services is nothing surprising, howeverthese releases represent something very big in our relationship with technologyand our consumption of entertainment.
Tool’s uploading of their music to commercial streaming canbe viewed as the definitive moment when digital services finally defeated thelegacy artists. Sure, commercial streaming is ubiquitous and any new artistrefusing to upload their music to a digital services platform essentiallyresigns themselves to obscurity. However, for many years legacy bands such asThe Beatles, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin were able to resist calls to upload theirmusic to streaming platforms, often citing the low royalty rates (reportedlybetween $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream on Spotify) as well as their playlistarrangements. Legacy bands were able to resist for some time because of strongfan bases willing to pay for physical CDs, merchandise and tour tickets, but oneby one, all acts eventually made their way to streaming platforms.
Until Friday 2nd August, Tool were one of thelast big artists of the pre-streaming era to refuse to stream their music. WithTool’s capitulation to streaming platforms, there are now only at best two big actsfrom the pre-streaming era that haven’t uploaded their full discography tostreaming platforms, namely the late RnB singer Aaliyah and hip-hop legends DeLa Soul. Both have not been able to stream their biggest albums because ofcontractual disputes and mismanagement. Aside from these anomalies, the war hasbeen definitively won.
Tool’s acceptance of streaming also says something about thetimes we live in. Content creators who resist the potentially unfair financialarrangements with streaming platforms doom themselves to not making any kind ofprofit at all. Legacy acts certainly know this and have realised the potentialprofit to be made from appealing to a generation raised using iTunes andSpotify. Def Leppard, after joining commercial streaming in June 2018, sawa 95% increase in album sales as well as 5.4 million streams in just the firstweek. Selling 5.4 million copies of physical CDs would offer greateraccompanying profits than streaming, however physical sales are scant thesedays, which forces bands into a position where they must make the best out of abad situation. Ultimately, for many artists, commercial streaming bridges thegap between older music fans and a younger audience and provide the potentialfor a band’s legacy to have a longer lasting impact.
But why is Drake’s ‘Care Package’ release notable and whatdoes this have to do with the wider issues surrounding streaming? Drake, aCanadian rapper who became popular in the midst of the streaming era, made thebulk of his releases available on commercial streaming platforms. However,hip-hop music has a strong tradition of releasing non-commercial songs, oftenin the form of freestyles, remixes, and miscellaneous music projects. Some ofDrake’s most popular songs, for example Trust Issues, Girls LoveBeyonce and Draft Day, were generally non-revenue generating andmostly used to promote excitement for more formal album releases. Uploadingthese ‘loosies’ onto a streaming platform not only allows him to draw revenuefrom them, but it also acts as a permanent and easily accessible record of allhis artistic output. Drake himself espouses this idea, saying that thecompilation album will keep “some of our most important moments togetheravailable in one place.”
Looking beyond mega stars like Drake, streaming platformscan act as a permanent archive of localised but culturally significant acts. Formany musicians in the developing world, high-budget releases and distributionsof music projects were not always available, which meant that music from manymusicians would simply vanish even after making a cultural dent. But streamingproviders have made uploading music to their services easier, meaning thatartists like the Afrigo Band can upload recordings from the 1970s, while italso provides opportunities for niche music scenes, such as deathmetal bands in Botswana (yes, really) toleave their legacy.
Most musicians would agree that commercial streaming does notoffer content creators a fair deal. Debates about how to give content creatorsa fair share, or even what a ‘fair share’ even looks like, probably won’t besettled anytime soon. However, used correctly, streaming can act as anaccessible bridge to the past and as a means to honour the creativity andlabour of creators.