Streaming, Stealing from Artists

I agree with the title of Holly Richmond’s “The Most Ethical Way to Stream Music: Not At All.” It appears that artists are not getting royalties or deals that can compare to individuals purchasing their albums or songs through platforms like Google Play and iTunes.

And, as alluded to in the article with the Metallica example, musicians have the most power when it comes to music streaming. Over the past couple years, there has been a lot of debate revolving around Taylor Swift’s decision to pull her music from Spotify. Additionally, she did not release “1989” on the platform. Although there was a lot of backlash, it seemed like a logical and ethical move. She justified this in an opinion editorial article, “For Taylor Swift, the Future of Music Is a Love Story,” which she wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 2014. She explained her feelings about music being art, and the way in which art has been severely undervalued by streaming services.

I, for one, opted to purchase the album due to the inaccessibility of it through streaming services.Still, after purchasing the album, I discovered that I only enjoyed a few songs. Perhaps it is ethical to hold the entire album from streaming services, but is it also ethical to choose the best 30 seconds of a song to let fans and potential buyers listen to as the sample? With this in mind, I believe that both streaming and selling need reform. The music does need protection, but consumers also need protection and better sampling options. A logical option might be to allow users to listen through an album once before paying.

More recently, artists, like Rihanna and Beyonce, have been streaming their music through Tidal, which is a sub-based streaming platform that is owned by Jay-Z. As it is owned by an artist who has a successful label, I hope that it offers attractive options for both consumers and artists. Thus far, I have heard that it offers better royalties for the participating artists in addition to giving perks, like early releases, to subscribers in order to combat Spotify’s iffy setup. Ultimately, Spotify’s biggest issue is that the Premium sub-based option is not very attractive to free users, or it does not advertise its strong points very well (regardless of advertising to free users in between every three to four songs).

It will be interesting to see if the game changes.