The trend at the moment is for streaming services to tout the “exclusive” content that they’re offering. It’s probably a good deal for individual artists, but not for everyday music consumers.
Image: Jana Beamer
I’m old enough to remember record stores. Heck, I’m old enough to remember records, and still have more than a few of them around, as when I reviewed the cheap and cheerful mBeat Portable USB Turntable Recorder.
Back when a record store was the primary way to gain on-demand access to music, the key problem with accessibility you had was that if you were hunting for a particular LP or single, you were at the mercy of a given store’s stock at the time you were in the store. If they were all sold out of Purple Rain, you were plumb out of luck.
(Yes, there was also radio to consider in those dim dark distant days, but I grew up in a town with one commercial radio station that had to be dragged kicking and screaming away from country music. It wasn’t much of an option, and phone requests aside, it’s never been much of an “on-demand” solution anyway.)
Let’s fast forward from the days when I had hair to today, when we’re repeatedly told that the future of music is in streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. There’s certainly an appeal to paying around ten bucks a month for “unlimited” access to “millions” of tracks, and I’m not arguing that this is, in itself, a bad deal to speak of.
What’s interesting of late is how the competing services are touting their particular exclusives. Right now, if you want to listen to Dr Dre’s “Compton”, you can do so, via Apple Music only in streaming terms. Can’t say it’s my choice, but musical variety is nice like that, and tastes can vary.
Likewise, Taylor Swift hasn’t been subtle about her dislike of Spotify, but that didn’t stop her from making “1989” available for streaming… again, on Apple Music.
Lest this seem like some kind of advertisement for Apple’s side of the streaming fence, the issue is that there’s other exclusives on other platforms. Tidal’s essentially built on the premise of higher-quality streams and exclusive content, and Spotify has its share of “exclusives” as well, including Prince.
Image: Scott Penner
The Prince situation with streaming is one that interests me, partly because I’m a fan of his work, but also because he recently went on a bit of a tear removing much of his work from all streaming services. There’s a few odds and sods that seem to have missed his clean sweep approach, but not much. Right after doing that, guess what the small purple dude from Minneapolis did?
He released an exclusive track via Spotify.
Yeah, I don’t get it either. Prince is a bit of a contradiction when it comes to online, on the one hand being an absolute pioneer in terms of online music sales, and on the other hand declaring the Internet to be “completely over” before then deciding to sell DRM-laden music files… for a while.
Spotify’s happy enough for free streams for now, so I can even embed said Prince track right here for your listening pleasure (or outright horror, depending on your musical tastes)
Prince is an unusual character — I’m phrasing that carefully to jump around potential libel laws — but he can clearly see the value in allowing and restricting access, or in other words, exclusives. So can Dre, so can Taylor, and so, I’m sure, can plenty of other artists.
I very much get why an artist might choose an exclusive, especially if there’s money on the line. Dre’s an Apple employee, so it would be surprising in the extreme if his music appeared anywhere but Apple Music. Taylor Swift’s anti-Spotify stance has always rested on the issue of recompense, but she’s clearly happier in the Apple camp.
Prince has shown again and again that he’ll happily sell his music to the highest bidder, including bundling one album to the front of the extremely right-wing UK Daily Mail. Yeah, I’ve got a legal copy of that album, and the relative in the UK that I got to buy that paper was mortified at the prospect of having to buy the Mail, even once.
Where money talks, artists often walk, and with the spectre of easy piracy ever present, it’s not hard to see why.
You can, naturally, still buy singles or albums digitally or even in physical form (for most albums) if you like, but I doubt that too many heavy users of streaming services think of their subscriptions as “purchases”. You’re only renting the music, rather than having some kind of ownership of a thing — although that, too, is subject to the whims of the record labels and the often confusing quagmire of copyright law.
The thing is, for the regular consumer, streaming exclusivity creates the same kind of scarcity that existed back in the record store days. No one streaming service has “every” bit of music, but by locking them away in specific services, you leave those with longer term commitments to one service, or those who have broader musical tastes with a poor experience, because you either pony up a significant amount more money to subscribe to multiple services in order to cover your artist choices, or you avoid those artists entirely.
That’s a bum deal for consumers, and a risk for artists who may lose fans in the medium to long term.