Physical Sales Killed By Digital Sales, Digital Sales Killed By Streaming

[Joyrex]

According to BGR, more people opted to buy physical media than digital downloads last year: https://bgr.com/2019/03/03/cd-sales-vs-streaming-itunes-report/

 

It seems digital downloads 15 minutes of fame are up rather quickly in comparison to physical formats as everything goes the way of streaming...

 

What could possibly dethrone streaming as the dominant way we consume music?

[Somanymachines]

Cassette recording!

[pizza]

holograms of your fav artists playing their hits in your livingroom

[Real Human Bean]

When we master teleportation we'll be able to pay a small fee for the artist to beam themselves to our lounges where they will play our favourites and kiss us sweetly on the forehead.
As a working musician I'd be happy to do this for 35 hours per week and believe it would solve many problems both for the music world and indeed, the entire universe.

[zkom]

What could possibly dethrone streaming as the dominant way we consume music?

 

Computer generated music to suit whatever you just need at the moment.

[Joyrex]

holograms of your fav artists playing their hits in your livingroom

Isn't that just another form of streaming?

 

I wonder how long it will be before the concept of an "album" (e.g., a collection of songs by an artist) will become irrelevant, with listeners preferring to just have that artists' most popular tracks at their fingertips?

 

If you think about it, the whole album concept was really to bundle together tracks from an artist to sell on a physical medium. Sure, creatively it became a container for a concept or theme in some cases, but for the most part albums merely served to sell you more music at a higher cost than say a single or an EP.

[apriorion]

Sorry to be a pedant, but isn't your title incorrect? Shouldn't it read "Digital sales killed by physical sales; physical sales killed by streaming"? 

[Rubin Farr]

I've read that less than 10% of overall music sales are physical media these days.

[Braintree]

Long live Bandcamp.

[Brisbot]

and streaming killed by pirating?

 

What could possibly dethrone streaming as the dominant way we consume music?

 

Computer generated music to suit whatever you just need at the moment.

 

I'm honestly a bit worried about this. Yeah it probably won't happen for a few decades and we may all be long gone before it happens but it's basically inevitable. Feed the AI your favorite artist and generate 1000s of new favorite artist tracks in minutes.

[YEK]

 

 

What could possibly dethrone streaming as the dominant way we consume music?

Music in pill form or injection

[Goiter Sanchez]

Long live Bandcamp.

[Extralife]

Long live Bandcamp.

[auxien]

Long live Bandcamp.

[whosebrian]

Noise-cancelling helmets

[RickDastardly]

Long live Bandcamp.

[cloud capture]

Bong live Landcamp

[prdctvsm]

      streaming killed by emulator ?

[goDel]

 

Long live Bandcamp.

 

 

 

Although I have to add, I really haven't jumped on the streaming bandwagon. Still dl everything. Just not interested in streaming. 

[YangYing]

 

 

Long live Bandcamp.

 

 

 

Although I have to add, I really haven't jumped on the streaming bandwagon. Still dl everything. Just not interested in streaming. 

 

same ere 

[Nebraska]

Although I have to add, I really haven't jumped on the streaming bandwagon. Still dl everything. Just not interested in streaming. 

 

same here. usually use youtube to gage if i want to download something- this usually ends up being about 5 or less albums a month. i've personally really downsized how much music i listen to

[Ivan Ooze]

digitals all the way

also long live bandcamp!

[zkom]

and streaming killed by pirating?

 

What could possibly dethrone streaming as the dominant way we consume music?

 

Computer generated music to suit whatever you just need at the moment.

 

I'm honestly a bit worried about this. Yeah it probably won't happen for a few decades and we may all be long gone before it happens but it's basically inevitable. Feed the AI your favorite artist and generate 1000s of new favorite artist tracks in minutes.

 

I think first comes the kind of AI that can create music for adverts or films or youtube videos or wherever you need just some background based on some parameters like is it supposed to be scary, happy, slow, fast, etc. Just some generic background music that nobody listens to actively.

 

But the next step is maybe a kind of template based AI. Let's say that there's a hit song from some pop singer or group. But in future there might not be a "definitive version" of that song that is listened to by everybody. Instead there is a template with separate audio tracks for the vocals, instruments, note and chord data that can be applied over other style templates.

 

For example there is some pop singer called Allie Artificial. Now, she has a hit song, but it's all just template data. Nobody's listening to the same version. So, we have Larry Listener who wants to listen to it. The most popular version that people want to listen to it is some future punk rock, but Larry has had a rough day so he wants to relax and tells the AI to mix it into a piano ballad, which is then automatically generated by combining the original song template with the piano ballad template along with some parametrization that Larry provides, like tempo, mood settings, etc. Even key changes.

 

Now later Larry wants to go running and listen to the same song but as a disco-version. Whatever smart device he is carrying will remix it into a disco version but also the fitness app he has in the device can control the parameters so that it can change the tempo when he needs to run faster or slower.

 

So, it would be like a system based on three kinds of developers/artists: the artist(s) supplying the original song template, the developers/artists creating the style templates and the AI developers creating the software which can combine these and mix the new version.

 

Well, it's just an idea I had, anyway.

[bitchroast]

the worse part is that, with spotify/etc people are still paying for music but now all the more of that money is going to the distribution platform masters. 

 

obviously, this has always been the case ..  but it seems with internet and bandcamp,etc, there's clearly an opportunity for something to exist where money is more properly gone in direction of the artists ..  but we opted to go opposite direction..

 

people cbf and prefer subscription models cos its more convenient for the listener. 

 

is it really that hard to just use soulseek and an iPod classic and just find music yourself + occasionally pay artists accordingly with the music you enjoy ?? 

[zkom]

I don't know if this is the right place to complain about this but why the fuck there isn't a Bleep shop app similar to the Bandcamp app where you could stream the music you've bought? I just need to keep copying the files from device to device to not to use the limited downloads like some pleb from 2002.