As streaming services mature, opportunity emerges in the niche
The dominant players in music streaming, like Spotify & Apple Music, are going for the mainstream consumer. Who’s left to cater for the power users?
The emergence of niche streaming services will be one of the topics at the c/o pop Convention 2017, one of Germany’s leading music industry conferences and showcase festivals (Cologne, 16–20th August).
Those plugged into the streaming space are seeing a clear shift in focus from Spotify. In its first years, Spotify concentrated on power users: in order to appeal to music lovers, Spotify had to convince people that streaming was superior to files or physical copies. More so, it had to convince people that a paid monthly subscription was better than downloading everything for free from unlicensed services.
It did a great job. It quickly built up a vast library of music with a powerful search. It made it easy to organise libraries with playlists. Those playlists became a form of social media: items that could be followed and updated. Users amassed large followings on their playlists, which helped the service spread. For many in those first years, it completely changed the way they discovered and connected to music.
In recent years, Spotify has gotten even better at making our lives more convenient. Features like Discover Weekly, Release Radar, Daily Mixes, as well as its tool that helps you find tracks to add to your playlists: it strives to create a consistent and convenient experience to users.
There are also signs that it’s moving beyond the early adopter and looking more at mass audiences. These users are not as deep into music as the earlier generation: mostly listening to music in the background, and listening to other people’s playlists rather than composing their own.
When designing a streaming service, or any type of content-centric service, the most important thing is that a new user gets to something they want to hear as fast as possible. This may mean by using the search, but it should also take into account the situations where a user doesn’t really know what they want to listen to. With the users Spotify, Apple Music, and other major services are trying to attract now, this latter situation becomes more prevalent among the user base. As such, services are optimizing in order to increase the likelihood of people finding something great.
One way in which Spotify is trying to make the user experience more predictable is by de-emphasizing user generated playlists in search. Instead, if a search term matches something Spotify generated, it will rank that even above artist created playlists. This way, Spotify can be sure that it matches the editorial standards and goals they’ve set out.

This, together with other developments in the streaming world, such as Soundcloud’s precarious state, are leaving a void: new services have room to pioneer new models that cater better to the early adopters. It’s akin to when MySpace started losing its dominance ten years ago, which created room for previously mentioned startups, as well as Facebook to brand itself as a place for artists to connect with their fans.
At the c/o pop convention in August, we’re proud to spread a spotlight on some of the people building new models for streaming. In no particular order:
Resonate — a blockchain-based streaming coop

The founder of Resonate, Peter Harris, will talk about his ‘fair trade streaming’ model. He envisions a streaming service which is owned by the artists, fans, and wider ecosystem that participates on it. This way, it’s not just some shareholders that take away all the value, but it’s actually in the hands of the participants. Resonate combines their cooperative model with blockchain, which allows the service to accurately account for all the transactions on its network and be truly owned by its participants.
Learn more about blockchain at the c/o pop convention:
IDAGIO — streaming reinvented for classical music
(disclosure: I have joined IDAGIO as Product Director since I started my writing collaboration with the c/o pop convention)
Previously co-founding Simfy, “Germany’s Deezer”, c/o pop convention speaker Christoph Lange’s most recent venture is IDAGIO. It helps classical music lovers navigate music, by exposing the right data structure to them in a way not done by other streaming services: composer, work, performer, recording.
Like the other services on the panel, it tries to offer a fairer deal to artists & labels. It does this by paying out per second played, rather than per play, since classical music recordings often have strongly deviating lengths.
Voltra — a music store that streams

Upon first meeting Voltra-founder Paolo Fragomeni, he explained how he believes in music ownership, instead of the fleeting experience offered by streaming services. So he set out to build a service that’s geared towards this, but acknowledging the consumer reality of music streaming. The service is best described as a hybrid Rdio & iTunes, with a little bit of Bandcamp.
Through a different thought process, Resonate founder Peter Harris arrived at a similar stream-to-own model. It seems like an idea whose time has come, and will definitely be a good topic for discussion on the panel.
The Orchard — a distributor’s point-of-view
Also on the panel is Nikoo Sadr, who does digital at music distributor The Orchard. With Nikoo we’ll discuss wider trends, as well as get a perspective on the opportunities niche services represent for artists & labels.
An example of such a trend is the scale local players are achieving, such as Anghami in the Middle East, or Saavn in India.
What the niche means for the future, and what else pioneers in this area are doing to innovate, is something we’ll be discussing at Cologne based conference c/o pop Convention 2017 (17 + 18th August).
We hope to see you there.


