1) The role of music streaming in the music industry
For this topic, I want to talk about the different forms of music streaming (YouTube, Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music), the ways that it affects both producers and consumers, and what it means for producers and consumers in terms of how consumers access and consume music. This is relevant and important to us now because music streaming has been more more of a new age service and has radically changed the way that people listen to music.
Music streaming has become increasingly popular in the last few years while CD and record sales have dropped, and more and more companies are moving towards it (http://www.musicweek.com/news/read/sony-deal-means-soundcloud-subscription-service-is-on-its-way/064358, http://www.musicweek.com/news/read/universal-music-group-partners-with-watch-company-raymond-weir/064353). Streaming has changed they way consumers access music and the way artists put out music and market them selves. There have been many concerns over how artists are getting paid, and artists such as Taylor Swift have spoken out about the importance of artists getting paid for providing their music to streaming services (http://taylorswift.tumblr.com/post/122071902085/to-apple-love-taylor, http://time.com/3940500/apple-music-taylor-swift-release/). However, the decline of music sales was also not a result of music streaming. Since cassette tapes, consumers have been trying to find ways to access music more cheaply, and the movement of records into digital music made that even easier. Streaming, while not always praised as the best thing for artists, was meant to be a solution to this problem (http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/02/17/71963/).
2) Illegal downloading (of music) and the ethics of paying for digital music
This topic overlaps with my first idea, but this one is meant to focus more specifically payment for music in the era of digital music. This is relevant to us now because many people stopped paying for music when it became digitized, and recently there have been more calls to action about getting people to pay for music again, whether that is through streaming, iTunes, or cutting people off from digital music. This affects us directly as consumers of music (and maybe producers?).
I saw in a TED Talk that an indie musician thought we should not demand that people pay for music but make it entirely available to consumers online for free (through services such as SoundCloud) and ask that people pay/donate what they can (through services such as Kickstarter) (https://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking?language=en). Other musicians, such as Taylor Swift, have rallied hard for the strict payment of music (http://taylorswift.tumblr.com/post/122071902085/to-apple-love-taylor, http://time.com/3940500/apple-music-taylor-swift-release/). Swift has demanded that Apple Music pay artists during the free trial, and she and Adele have also entirely removed their music from certain streaming services. Thus, they removed access to digital music to prevent illegal downloading and force listeners to physically buy their music again. Others are saying that people just don’t pay for music anymore and the industry should accept that and change its market strategy. In other words, it’s just not possible to make people pay for digital music, don’t make money from music, make money from tours, merchandise, meet & greets, etc (http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2014/09/08/fans-arent-going-pay-music-anymore-thats-ok/, http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/01/06/by-2021-itunes-music-downloads-will-be-dead/). However, there is still a concern that producers, record labels, and others who work with artists on music behind the scenes are only compensated from music sales, so sales of tours and merchandise will benefit only artists and not the others who help them to release music.
3) The evolution of digital music consumption
I know we only needed two ideas but this was one I had and I figured I’d just throw it in at the end because I’m not sure if it would be too broad. This topic would just discuss how the way we consume digital music has changed, from the advent of MTV and YouTube to the way Apple revolutionized digital music with iTunes, and then illegal downloading and the importance of music streaming now. It would draw on some articles from the previous two ideas, but I would also have to do some further research.
