Streaming In General
So between the two, Spotify is probably the better service for everyone involved (bar, perhaps, multi-platinum artists who have no real need for further publicity.) Lets ask a slightly broader question:Is streaming itself a good thing?
Overall, I’d say yes. Though Taylor Swift makes a good point about devaluing music, music was devalued long before Spotify or Apple Music came on the scene. In a post-Napster world, it was always going to be impossible for the big names to keep up the pretense of the £20 album. That’s without even considering the democratisation of music that’s taken place through the spread of incredibly cheap music creation software and the rise of sites like Bandcamp.
Conceptually then, I have no real problem with streaming whatsoever. As far as I’m concerned, all the streaming services (lets not forget the likes of Xbox music and Deezer as well!) provide a risk free way for people from all over the world to try my music, and I’m pretty much ok with that.
If you are interested in supporting your friendly neighborhood independent artist however, you should be under no illusion that streaming is anywhere near as useful as buying their music (even with Apple’s larger payout.) If there’s an album you find yourself listening to over and over again, please consider buying just one track from it. The Artist will almost certainly be very grateful that you did.
Overall though, thing’s are pretty rosy. Thank you all for supporting me and giving my music the time of day. Whether you’re listening through Spotify or Apple or Google or Deezer or Amazon or emusic, You’re all incredibly lovely people. Cheers.
Ps. Buy my stuff! Buy iiiiiiiiit. Go on, you know you want to.