All posts tagged: music streaming

Streaming has opened up so many doors in today’s technological world for listeners. Back in the day you used to have to burn a CD, buy a physical record, use a cassette tape, illegally download the song, or more recently go straight to iTunes and pay for it. Companies like Spotify, Amazon, and Apple are the reasons why we can stream so effortlessly due to the powers of the internet and the colossal effect of on-demand streaming. Streaming not only opened up many doors for listeners like you and me, but also for artists, record labels, and people trying to get more exposure through music.

The music streaming industry has had a lag compared to the after effects of internet on many industries. The internet brought great innovation and great changes to the world, but the music sector was one of the last to be effected. Although the music industry was one of the last mediums that really had a profound effect due the internet, it’s all catching up! The industry has changed forever due to music streaming. Every vertical of the music industry is learning just how effective and improved music consumption is now compared to the legacy system. The idea of discovering and recommending music used to be hard to find. The only way for this back in the day was at social gathers, a car ride “i.e cassettes”, radio, or more formally word of mouth.  Now you can be in your living room or in your bed, finding the next inspiring song that can get you motivated to attack the day.

Spotify offers you recommendations of new artists and like-minded music on their platform. The genius comes when you listen to music you like; naturally without any additional work, Spotify can recommend music to you that you will actually enjoy thanks to their advanced algorithms. Previously you would have never heard this music elsewhere, whether it’s because of geographic position or the lack of time to go through every song in a catalog across every artist in the world. Music streaming made this process condensed; you listen to a song and magically, a song thats similar pops up next. Playlists that had never been congregated before are simply waiting for us to press play. Music streaming is a generational democratizing force. People sometimes feel as if Spotify is charging too much, or that they aren’t paying the artist fairly. This is inherently bogus.

Spotify democratized music for artist, listeners, and everyone else involved in music streaming including legacy music businesses like record labels. Artists can simply record and using a couple clicks get their music uploaded to Spotify. Previously artists may have had to go through multiple record labels before getting their song on a single radio station. The artist had to be ultra-creative to get their song heard by someone in the first place. We have all heard one-hit wonders previously, but now content like Old Town Road or Gangnam Style is easily shared across borders. This not only make our lives better, but also makes the artist’s life better forever. One song can change the world; companies like Spotify & Apple show us this on a daily basis and built business models around this theme.

There hasn’t been a day that I’ve woken up and listened to a song and it not have changed my mood for the rest of the day. Music can put us in a better state of mind; it is one of the few things that connects us to our ancestors of eons past. Another huge democratizing effect of music streaming is people controlling what they listen to at all times. It’s innate in every human to want to control the experience they are living at least to some extent. With music specifically people want to control what they are listening to. The radio is great whenever there is no other music coming inbound; the radio picks up invisible airways out of thin air and is able to play music for you, a miraculous feat of technology. However, it’s obvious the next inevitable innovation after that should allow for an on-demand music selection of any song on any catalog across the world.

Spotify allowed for this to happen. When people can express themselves through their music selection, you can find out more about those people, their cultures, and the way they are living the human experience. Music streaming is only going to exponentially expand, because it has the great effects of the internet and human psyche behind it. At Brassroots we see music streaming in the future being a high bandwidth experience in a connected fashion.

We have seen this theme with social media companies of the past. People want to be together and express feelings to each other by sharing their version of the human experience. The best way to do that is through music! Right now music is stationary. You listen to a song , press pause/pay, then it’s over. You can’t share that experience with someone else unless you live together, are at a concert, or an event. That’s all changed with Brassroots. You can have a collaborative music experience with anyone in the world from your living room. Collaborative music streaming can be as easy as just listening to a song. I think the world and more importantly, individuals love to connect through one of the best mediums known to humankind, listening to music. There’s no telling the heights music streaming will reach in the future, but it’s definitely still in its earliest days. We should be excited for the future of music, it is just getting started.