Everything nowadays is instant, people want everything straight away and then quickly shuffle off to the next thing. Being part of the so-called 'iPhone generation' I'm perfectly guilty of this, hopping from craze to craze like an excitable dog in a room full of hundreds of its favourite toys. However music is not a place where I like to rush things.
The anticipation of waiting for a CD to arrive in the post or browsing a record shop not knowing what I'm going to pick up are some of the most exciting feelings for me. When I get the disc I set aside a couple of hours on the day it arrives in my life just to listen. That's how I consume my music, listening carefully and absorbing it slowly, sipping at it like an expensive glass of wine and savouring the taste.
For many these days consuming music is something instant. They open Spotify or Apple Music and it's all there in front of them, and that really means ALL of it. Someone with one of these services can listen to almost any track ever made (provided they have an Internet connection) for something like the cost of an album per month. Don't get me wrong, these services have brilliant advantages and the idea you can listen to anything you want is amazing as a music fan but it's not quite that simple.
As with anything these days the idea that you get what you pay for runs rife in music. I'm sure you've all heard of 'Fairtrade', if not it's a sticker on a piece of food or whatever that means 'if you buy this product the person who farmed/made this gets paid properly'. Seeing this sticker on the food often means it's just that little bit more expensive but you know it's for good reason. Likewise with the 'organic' or 'free range' stickers, you pay that bit more so you know that everything in the process is done properly.
Music, in reality, is no different. Sure Spotify is the cheapest way to consume music. You pay less than £10 a month to get access to all the music you could possibly want. It's a great deal for you but, like buying a cheap shirt from Primark, it's not good for the people who made it.
"Ah" I hear you say, "but it makes it so much easier for small bands to be discovered". Sure... maybe if 'discovered' means having one song picked to appear on a few people's 'Discover' playlists through an algorithm, you might have a point. Of course there are people who listen their 'Discover' playlists pick out the ones they like and put them on another playlist and continue listening but most of those couldn't tell you the name of the song let alone the artist. That's not discovered. 'Discovered' often comes along when a lot of people that know a lot about music feature you on their radio show/dj set/blog/magazine because in reality those are the things that will make or break a band.
Then there's the other obstacle Spotify throws up - it's impact on the charts. A lot people like listening to the same old stuff they always have and, with streaming being included in the charts, it means that it's so much harder for new bands to work their way up into the top 100 let alone top 10. All this while albums like 'Greatest Hits' by Queen have been sat in the top 100 for 72 weeks in 2015 & 2016 - an album which made it's first appearance in 1981 and stays there due to streaming figures.
Even if a new band fights past these barriers and does get 'discovered' Spotify doesn't even help then! It pays artists between £0.0048 - £0.0068 per play. Lets assume it's the upper edge of that and now to pay an artist the normal album price of £7.99 you have to listen to tracks over 1000 times on Spotify to pay them that money - it's crazy
So when all this is considered it leads to the current situation in the music industry where nobody except those bands that have already made it have enough money to keep going and it's become so much harder to make it to the top. This, slowly but surely, is creating a massive stagnation in the music industry. To see this you don't have to look further than Download festival's headliners last year (Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden & Rammstein) who have all been around for 20+ years!
However with music it's easy to make a change; stop paying your Spotify subscriptions head down to your nearest record shop or your favourite artists' gig and pick up a CD or a vinyl and get yourself some 'fairtrade music'. Without it musicians won't have enough money to make new music, go on tours and be able to live off of their music - something that's never been easy but also something that is now harder than ever.
As with anything these days the idea that you get what you pay for runs rife in music. I'm sure you've all heard of 'Fairtrade', if not it's a sticker on a piece of food or whatever that means 'if you buy this product the person who farmed/made this gets paid properly'. Seeing this sticker on the food often means it's just that little bit more expensive but you know it's for good reason. Likewise with the 'organic' or 'free range' stickers, you pay that bit more so you know that everything in the process is done properly.
Music, in reality, is no different. Sure Spotify is the cheapest way to consume music. You pay less than £10 a month to get access to all the music you could possibly want. It's a great deal for you but, like buying a cheap shirt from Primark, it's not good for the people who made it.
"Ah" I hear you say, "but it makes it so much easier for small bands to be discovered". Sure... maybe if 'discovered' means having one song picked to appear on a few people's 'Discover' playlists through an algorithm, you might have a point. Of course there are people who listen their 'Discover' playlists pick out the ones they like and put them on another playlist and continue listening but most of those couldn't tell you the name of the song let alone the artist. That's not discovered. 'Discovered' often comes along when a lot of people that know a lot about music feature you on their radio show/dj set/blog/magazine because in reality those are the things that will make or break a band.
Then there's the other obstacle Spotify throws up - it's impact on the charts. A lot people like listening to the same old stuff they always have and, with streaming being included in the charts, it means that it's so much harder for new bands to work their way up into the top 100 let alone top 10. All this while albums like 'Greatest Hits' by Queen have been sat in the top 100 for 72 weeks in 2015 & 2016 - an album which made it's first appearance in 1981 and stays there due to streaming figures.
Even if a new band fights past these barriers and does get 'discovered' Spotify doesn't even help then! It pays artists between £0.0048 - £0.0068 per play. Lets assume it's the upper edge of that and now to pay an artist the normal album price of £7.99 you have to listen to tracks over 1000 times on Spotify to pay them that money - it's crazy
So when all this is considered it leads to the current situation in the music industry where nobody except those bands that have already made it have enough money to keep going and it's become so much harder to make it to the top. This, slowly but surely, is creating a massive stagnation in the music industry. To see this you don't have to look further than Download festival's headliners last year (Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden & Rammstein) who have all been around for 20+ years!
However with music it's easy to make a change; stop paying your Spotify subscriptions head down to your nearest record shop or your favourite artists' gig and pick up a CD or a vinyl and get yourself some 'fairtrade music'. Without it musicians won't have enough money to make new music, go on tours and be able to live off of their music - something that's never been easy but also something that is now harder than ever.
