Streaming’s Shortcomings
If everyone got their music from streaming? That’s a big problem.
Streaming…
- has no cross promotion with local events or the local economy.
- has no cross promotion with local unsigned bands.
- has no direct connection back to the artist.
- completely ignores the purchasing power of the listener.
- has a limited and unstable (ever changing) catalog.
- pays a lower royalty per listener than other performance licenses.
- is the worst sound quality of all distribution platforms.
- has no production credits or copyright information.
- has no writer, composer, or publishing credits.
- has no human interaction for discovery of new music.
- assumes genre and style over all else when mixing music.
- assumes what you liked yesterday morning is what you will like Friday night.
- avoids selecting album/deep cuts and non-hits nearly as bad as top 40.
- requires multiple subscriptions (network and provider) to be active and paid up.
- cannot be rewound and reviewed for additional enjoyment.
- cannot easily be recorded or mixed into playlists and sets.
- contains only a low-resolution cover image, not complete artwork.
- contains no lyrics or artist notes.
- just got The Beatles in 2016.
- requires almost no paid humans to get it to your ears.
I’ve been around streaming for literally 20 years now, and have programmed it and listened to it since the beginning. If it truly is taking over the music industry we have to be honest about it’s shortcomings. That’s the only way we can start to address them.
