I've used Idagio for 6 months. They have a reasonable interface, good performances and sound quality, but their catalog is indeed limited. There are hundreds of performances of the same well-known works, but there's not (very) much beyond it. I've discovered about 100 fairly unknown composers through YouTube that I consider quite good, but many of them are missing from Idagio, or are listed with one or two works. Their catalog also lacks discoverability. There's nothing to relate Karl Goldmark to Brahms. I also dislike the subscription model, heavily.
So, I still buy albums (mostly from prestomusic, in case someone wants to know).
> the sector is only surviving thanks to public and private subsidies.
That could never change. Streaming will make it worse, though.
The 20th century was a golden age for recorded music. Maybe there is no coming back but I don't think (or I didn't think then) that streaming services are in a very strong position in the long run: consumers like them because the current deal is that you pay a single subscription and you have access to basically all the music (a very nice proposition indeed). But the streaming services own no content, the day the content owners find a more lucrative way to sell music they will move part of their catalog out of the streaming services and at the same time, make the product less and less attractive. At least, that was the theory.
Now, I think Spotify in particular, has built a strong moat due to their ubiquity (all devices support Spotify). It's getting late for pop music. For Classical, I don't know but 6 years ago, I was convinced there was still a strong possibility to save the old model since it was still making money on the traditional channels.
> Streaming will make it worse, though.
It has been the case for a while now.
Paul Baxter from Delphian Records said it best years ago:
"There's no way that a record company could operate on the fees from streaming alone. It's absolutely impossible. There are too many zeros in front of the amount-per-stream figure."
Spotify's power comes from more than its ubiquity. Pop music, the kind that charts (and the only kind labels care about), is way more commodified than TV shows. If Sony were to make a streaming service with just their music and leave Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon/etc, their artists would simply fail to chart ever again.
The advantage of a single streaming service with all the songs is also much greater than one with all the shows or movies. Nobody puts Netflix on "shuffle" or lets it play random episodes based on what they've watched in the past, but those are some of Spotify's biggest features. Its user shareable playlists also increase lock-in, along with other network effects. It's such a huge advantage to be able to play anything (or almost anything), I don't see how a service with a limited selection could compete.
I don't see any way for the labels to get out of the streaming age beyond serious anticompetitive collusion, and even then people would go back to piracy. Frankly, it couldn't happen to a nicer group of folks.
I mostly agree with you there. If you look at pop music as a whole, it's impossible to attack them directly.
But I don't think that the moat could never be broken. You have many people that consume music as background noises. But you also have many people that are passionate about the music they listen to and would like to have another way to support their artist of choices other than going to concerts (see vinyl revival etc).
My recipe to break the moat:
- choose a genre some people care strongly about (for me, that was classical)
- make a platform that offer a better UX for that genre, and have them pay for their music (those consumer are happy because better UX and they feel they actually support the artist they like)
- progressively signup labels by showing there is more money on your platform than on streaming services, they will progressively remove more and more of their catalog from streaming services if they were on them.
- once the model is proven on that genre, move to another (jazz, serious pop etc)
- as time goes by, the value of your service increase and while the value of the streaming services is lowered due to their catalog shrinking.
While this might be a fantasy, the truth is that today system continue to reward popular artists only, niche genre artists can't make a living from streaming. If a solution arises for them, they will come progressively, and over time it will weaken the streaming service moat.
> make a platform that offer a better UX for that genre, and have them pay for their music (those consumer are happy because better UX and they feel they actually support the artist they like)
Why would consumers not just pay for physical media like CDs/Vinyl/etc. if they prefer owning things?
I also lack the vision to see what could ultimately replace streaming as the primary delivery mechanism for music. It delivers an ongoing revenue stream, the monthly nature of which beats the old "put it out in a new format every few years so everyone has to rebuy everything" in terms of cash flow, although obviously not in overall revenue.
I could definitely see streaming wars in music happening like they are in video, although so far the music labels are content to watch the video labels hurt each other. But consider: Spotify's payouts are infamously low, lower than Google's or Apple's and I can imagine some labels deciding they can do better by providing their own streaming app. Since it's only a few labels, each will believe they have enough of a library to draw subscribers, and away we'll go.
But still: aside from the margins and market share concerns, what delivers a steadier income than streaming?
Streaming doesn't mean they can't experiment with additional revenue streams, including physical media sales and licensing opportunities, but it's hard to imagine something displacing streaming as a concept to the degree which streaming has displaced physical media sales.
The idea was to create a true streaming service in term of UX. All the same features as you are used to, except you start with the empty catalog and you purchase individual albums and you get the streaming service for free forever (no subscription). The service operating cost being funded by newer purchase. That's why I'm talking about Steam as the model, it's how they operate: you have access to your library forever even if you only pay for games once. (And mostly, you never play much to most of your purchases).
The steady income of subscription service is nice for the streaming platform but it's not nice for the classical music artists: they receive nothing.
I think bandcamp shows that there are people who still want to purchase and download a digital version and contribute directly to artists (on top of purchasing physical media).
I personally, want a lossless version that I can archive, have on my offline portable music player, stream to my phone, and stream through jellyfin to my stereo.
That fits better to the style of music I listen to, and how _I_ listen to music (I don't shuffle and listen to full albums only)
> Pop music, the kind that charts (and the only kind labels care about), is way more commodified than TV shows.
> Nobody puts Netflix on "shuffle" or lets it play random episodes based on what they've watched in the past
Not convinced. People used to watch TV the way they listened to the radio - turn it on to whatever's on and mostly ignore it. It's not the current dynamic but I don't think that's an immutable law of nature.
That’s been said about almost every style and genre of art. What’s so funny, is that it’s never happened; quite the opposite. Look at the renaissance of early music, as only one example. Sadly, 99% of all music that has ever been made was not written down or recorded. I think there’s a lot of opportunities to hunt down and discover lost, unrecognized, or forgotten music and bring it back to forefront. I was just listening to Indian classical bansuri (bamboo flute) music by Ronu Majumdar and Ajeet Pathak on Naxos. The album features 12th century ragas in the Hindustani tradition. What’s amazing about it, is you can hear how this style greatly influenced rock and roll from the mid-1960s to the mid 1970s, particularly the long and winding guitar solos that were famous during that era. And if you read about that time, it turns out that rock musicians were indeed listening to this music and getting ideas from it. There isn’t any AI around that is going to make deep connections like this. We are still very much in human-driven territory. What will certainly become common, however, is for human musicians to augment their compositional skills with the help of AI, not to replace it altogether.
> I suspect that purchasing music files to own will seem increasingly strange and inconvenient to younger people, though.
It'll be interesting to see what happens.
As a fan of blues, I've noticed that there are a lot of grey songs in my Spotify playlists. There's just no practical way to be able to listen to the music I want to hear besides owning it (Youtube is hit-or-miss as well).
For people who want to listen to pop, they're probably fine. But anything that's even a little niche is trouble. Or that's my experience, anyhow.
> I guess the idea is, why would you long tail when you can Pareto Principle?
IMO, that's not a great point. The music is already made - that's the hard part. It just needs to be licensed.
Maybe there are other channels that are more profitable than streaming, but I'm guessing that a lot of older/niche music is just locked away for no good reason.
At a certain point, I have to imagine that most artists would prefer their music be listened to if they aren't going to make money either way.
I got into blues via dancing, which has heavily influenced my tastes.
In no particular order:
* Will Wilde
* Sugarray Rayford
* Smokehouse
* Etta James
* Gordon Webster
* The Blue Vipers of Brooklyn
* Tin Pan
* Asylum Street Spankers
* Hugh Laurie
* Legendary Rhythm and Blues Revue
* Preservation Hall Jazz Band
* The Marsalis Family
* Katie Webster
* John Lee Hooker
* Keb Mo
* Son House
* Joe Bonamassa
* ZZ Ward
* Kevin Selfe
* Allen Toussaint
* Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown
* Bill Withers
* Nina Simone
* Buddy Guy
* Lightning Hopkins
* Howlin' Wolf
* Brother Yusef
There's probably a whole lot more - these are just the ones that I can think of off the top of my head. You probably know a lot of them, but I didn't want to guess which ones you know, so I just wrote out a bunch of people I like.
Yes, that's what I wanted to address and in the same way Steam address it with video games. You buy albums but you get the convenience of streaming services with no additional fees forever. Same as with Steam, I expected users to keep buying album regularity even if they didn't listen to them much. (cue seasonal sales etc...)
Mostly because the goal was to offer a premium experience targeted at the classical music enthusiast. UX was close to what you can see with Apple Classical or Idagio. On the business side, the model was really Steam and not any music store, seasonal sales included. Anyway, I only had a few month to try to raise some capital and I failed, so it's history now.
So, I still buy albums (mostly from prestomusic, in case someone wants to know).
> the sector is only surviving thanks to public and private subsidies.
That could never change. Streaming will make it worse, though.