The Music Industry’s Race to The Bottom

Streaming services have changed music forever.

How do you listen to music nowadays? Most likely, you subscribe to some sort of music streaming service (Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, etc). These platforms have revolutionized music for consumers. You are able to search and listen to millions of songs in a heartbeat without paying anything more than a monthly fee. Personally, I’ve used Spotify Premium for over six years.

However, there are some disturbing trends happening now within the music industry. Listening to Spotify’s Top 50 or the Billboard Hot 100 throughout this year, you may have noticed that a good chunk of songs seemed to be quite short. And you would be right.

A study was done earlier this year revealing that hit songs are becoming shorter and shorter. Meanwhile, artists are cramming an increasing number of brief songs into their albums. One of the main reasons that artists have gone this route is the growth of the streaming industry.

Seventy-five percent of all US music revenues are now derived from streaming services, based on data from 2018. Compare that with 2013, when streaming revenues were only 21% of the total. This trend shows no sign of slowing either. Similar to the movie industry, owning physical copies of media is becoming more infrequent every…