Spotify- Creative Commons
Pandora- Creative Common
A couple weeks ago, Circa, the iPhone app news source reported a story about iTunes sales decreasing. This is news, but if you have been playing attention to the technological world around you, it won’t come as a shock to say that music streaming sites like Spotify are taking over.
Most people I talk to now use an app like Pandora or Spotify. It is the easiest and most economical way to obtain a boat load of legal music instantly. Instead of people having to buy or illegally download their music off the internet, they can just pay $10 a month and have almost any song they want within seconds.
The advantages of this are obvious. To buy an album on iTunes costs roughly $10. If you listen to a brand new album in a month the service basically pays for itself. If you listen to two new albums, you have already saved $10. It’s a great plan and something that is working well. iTunes has realized that streaming music is now the future of distributing music to the public and has released its own streaming service called iTunes Radio. Heck there is even chatter of Beats By Dre creating its own streaming service. PR wise, these two companies are staying current with the times and keeping an eye on their competitors.
The disadvantages of steaming really only affect people like me who at times can be a “music snob.” I love the fact that I have a huge music library. It has been a hobby of mine to collect music since iTunes first arrived. With streaming, personal music libraries don’t really mean anything anymore. Nothing is personal about streaming. If fully embraced, gone will be the days where you could look through somebody’s iTunes and see what kind of music they really listen to. By looking through their music library, you were looking into their soul. You knew that they either paid for that music or at least took the time to download it- not just search for it through a streaming website.
Another disadvantage of steaming music is that music on these services must be granted by the service owners. If you just saw a live show of the sickest new local artist, you won’t be able to show your friends on a streaming website because that artists might be too new. These streaming websites regulate consumers to listen to already successful artists.
What can artists learn from the latest tactic to distribute their music? When measuring your level of success, you will know you have been marginally successful once your name has been featured on one of these streaming sites. Once you are on their you can see how many people you have reached.
Overcast! 
I enjoyed reading this post because I feel like it’s very relevant to the modern music industry and the direction it’s headed. As a regular music streaming site user, I found your perspective on this developing mechanism for music listening to be insightful. It made me consider the pros and cons of listening to music this way. I completely agree with the point you raise about not being able to listen to new or local artists through streaming sites, this is something I am consistently annoyed with when I search for a lesser-known artist on sites like Pandora, Songza, etc. I agree with your point about the depersonalization effect of streaming sites, but there are times when I also like this feature. Sometimes I feel like my iTunes library is almost too personalized in the sense that I get sick of my music after awhile because it is so tailored to my taste. I like using music streaming because it’s a great outlet for finding new songs and music genres you may not have listened to otherwise. Overall, I think streaming sites are a great way to progress with the modern music listening industry.