Post date: April 27, 2021 2:42 pm

By Brody Lyons

What hasn’t changed since the internet has become so advanced? As a people we have gone from living a hands-on life to a “hands-on-phone” one in the past fifteen years. While it may seem like life hasn’t changed that much, one of the most notable differences is the way we as consumers in fact consume our media. How often do you still read a newspaper? Do you use the internet instead? Do you still go to Blockbuster to be able to watch a movie? Has Netflix outshined your DVDs? If you want to listen to a song, are you going to the store to get a CD, or are you using Youtube, Apple Music or Spotify? Streaming is one of the most notable differences in media consumption in recent years as entertainment is now the most easily accessible it has ever been. Does this however, make it easier on those producing or even consuming content?

In 2016, users on Twitter started to notice something changing when massively huge artists started pulling sales numbers that were… well as P!nk would say “Less Than Perfect”! Huge pop artists such as Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga had released albums this year, and all had one thing in common: Both artists had albums in both the “pure sales era” and the “streaming era”. The “pure sales era” being the time period in which physical copies of music were predominantly the way to consume music, (80s, 90s, 2000s, early 2010s) compared to the “streaming era”, being a time period in which music is being consumed via programs like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube (2015-present). Compare these artists pure sales in the “pure sales” era vs. the “streaming era”:

Beyoncé:

“Dangerously in Love” (2003 album) sales:

5 million albums sold

“Lemonade” (2016 album) sales:

1.5 million albums sold

Britney Spears:

“Oops!... I Did It Again” (2000 album) sales:

20 million albums sold

“Glory” (2016 album) sales:

874,000 albums sold

Katy Perry:

“Teenage Dream” (2010 album) sales:

3,100,000 albums sold

“Witness” (2016 album) sales:

840,000 albums sold

Lady Gaga:

“The Fame” (2008 album) sales:

8.8 million albums sold

“Joanne” (2016 album) sales:

170,000 albums sold

While of course, as time goes on some artists’ album sales may decrease, it's completely unusual for them to drop this drastically in the span of about ten years. This is because people are no longer purchasing albums in physical forms, such as CD, but rather streaming individual songs. It is very common nowadays that artists don’t even really care about making a good album anymore, they just need three to four good singles that they can market for music consumers to add to their playlist, as this is the most marketable way to gain success when releasing music. A lot of artists such as Taylor Swift have shown their disdain for streaming music as the financial aspect of the streams have been evidently low in regards to those producing music. Spotify openly pays an artist $0.0033 per stream, meaning that if a song were to get ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND streams, it would only make $330 for the artist. This is why artists lately put so much into touring, because this is how they make their fortune. This is also why artists are really pushing for their fans to purchase physical copies of music! Hence an artist like Taylor Swift who released nine different album covers for her album Folklore, coming with autographs for fans to collect, or including her own personal diary entries in a short book for her album Lover. This is an obvious example of marketing for physical copies, which works in her favor as she is the best-selling artist for physical albums of the past five years.

Finally, you may be wondering “how does this affect me?” It seems like a win-win! Easier access to music, and less money spent. What could go wrong? The biggest problem with the streaming era is the lack of quality in music. Like stated before, a lot of albums now are rush-released and have reviews claiming that the non-single tracks are “filler” tracks and have no effort put into them. This has been said about Ariana Grande’s 2020 album release “Positions”, which many fans as well as Metacritic.com claim has a few great radio hits, but the tracks sound very rushed. Another problem that this album, as well as many other recent releases face, is the shortening of track length in an attempt to gain more streams. Some tracks on “Positions” are only two minutes in length, compared to her debut album “Yours Truly” (2013) in which many are more than four to five minutes in length. This is another marketing scheme in which record labels believe that shorter songs will get music consumers to want to replay the song, as the first listen may have been great but obviously short in time. As the music industry changes by what seems very often, we unfortunately can only expect music to become more and more “marketable” as artists are losing money, meaning shorter and duller songs for us consumers.