Join the stream: The present and the future of music streaming

Photo of Hernán Piñera / CC

From listening to romances on the gramophone and to the selection of rap songs on the iPhone. In just a few years, not only what we listened to has changed, but also how we do it. Music has gone a long way from records to streaming, that is, access to huge audio libraries online without having to download all the songs.
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According to an IFPI study , in 2015, digital music brought more money for the first time in history than albums on physical media. The revenues of the industry have finally shown growth after almost two decades of decline, but artists and record company managers have no less reason to be nervous. Over the past year, the US record industry's streaming stream revenues for the first time exceeded the profits from downloading music content.

The product of mass radio stations with news and music was so interested in society that it remained very popular until now, without undergoing any special changes. Why do people like the radio? Because it was the first to tear the music away from the physical carrier.

Until now, not only the music consumption model proposed by the radio is relevant, but also a mountain of accompanying problems - piracy, dissatisfaction of artists and labels with low deductions, and, of course, the choice of music.

The herald of change was Napster. The startup first made the notorious file-sharing process with music as simple as possible, yet free. This simplicity brought the creators of the service to the pedestal - Napster grew faster than any business in history - but just as quickly killed the company. The rights holders did not come up with (or maybe did not try) how to make money on the Napster model, and filled up the startup with lawsuits from which the company never recovered.

The wave raised by Napster did not go in vain. MusicNet has reconciled the content with the law, offering users a million license tracks in exchange for monthly payments. Record companies rubbed their hands - they got more than 9/10 of MusicNet's total revenues. But the artists were not satisfied with the remnants. The bravest of them have tried new things.

Meanwhile, Pandora, another new player, tried to solve two problems at once: pay artists more and adjust playlists to the personal preferences of users with the help of algorithms in order to end the pirate chaos in the style of Napster. The first was not entirely successful, and the second one shot more than anyone could have expected - but from another company.

The two thousandth gave rise to many players who tried to repeat the success of Napster, but at the same time be friends with the law, artists and labels, as well as offer the user a certain zest. Swedish Spotify managed almost the best (in quantitative terms), and Sunday playlists became the highlight. Users from all over the world were amazed at how exactly the playlists met their expectations, and listened to about 5 billion songs offered. Let's try to understand how the service algorithm works in general.

Step 1. The algorithm searches for songs that often coexist with the user's favorite tracks in other playlists.

Step 2. Each user's favorite music is classified by genre in the most scrupulous way. For example, instead of banal “jazz” and “rock”, the program sees “East Coast Swing” and “Christian Alternative Metal”.

Step 3. Personal profile is compared with millions of other playlists. The result is songs that perfectly match your taste, but not previously played.

Of course, this description of the algorithm is greatly simplified ( here the developers themselves explain in more detail). In addition to the above, the Spotify engine eliminates songs that the user listened to for less than 30 seconds and does a thousand more things. The most important thing that distinguishes the service from competitors like Apple Music and Tidal, sometimes flaunting playlists created by famous musicians or editors: the songs are never promoted manually - everything the machine does.



Photo by Eric Fischer / CC

Producer Jimmy Iowain, who launched Apple Music, said in an interview with the Guardian the opposite: algorithms must be “humanized”, and making playlists is an “art” that cannot be practiced without people. Despite these words, Apple really needs to catch up with Spotify, and the Cupertino- based company is working to improve its recommendation algorithms in no time.

The SoundCloud service unconditionally leads in the number of users - 175 million - but does not offer any innovations and is in crisis. Then comes Spotify with more than 100 million subscribers, about 30% of which are paid; however, the company has never made a profit. Pandora consistently has about 80 million users, but their number has not been growing for a long time, and only 5% of customers pay the service. Finally, Apple Music and Tidal have 15 and 4 million paid subscribers, respectively.

The press agrees that the main struggle in the coming years will unfold between Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal. However, only the first ones hint at the possibility of really interesting innovations. Hundreds of millions of people around the world have become accustomed to streaming, but this is only a small part of the potential market. How to change technology in such a way as to multiply the number of subscribers?

Spotify, unlike its closest competitors, has already announced that they are going to teach algorithms to use the users' physical data - pulse, type of current physical activity, body temperature.

The head of the leading company in the analysis of user music preferences Echo Nest, spoke about the concept of "player without buttons" - a device that issues a continuous stream of songs without any consumer intervention based on all sorts of data about the latter. Considering how radio is still popular, the concept looks promising. Yes, Spotify bought Echo Nest two years ago.

So, the main issue of the development of streaming music - the role of man in the process; both editor and user. Algorithms work better and successfully process more data. In the near future, the machine is unlikely to create a perfectly balanced album like Pink Floyd or Kanye West, but successfully arrange the tracks one after the other ...

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