Whether it was what she intended or not, Taylor Swift threw down the “exclusive” gauntlet with her 2014 Wall Street Journal op-ed about the future of streaming services. In it, she referred to music as something “important and rare,” and therefore, “valuable.” She was arguing about something only tangentially related to streaming exclusives, but she was also framing a mindset towards music that would morph into the industry standard over the next two years. And last summer, when she gave only Apple permission to stream her album 1989, she planted the seed of a powerful idea. In 2016, another year of war between the big three on-demand streaming services (Tidal, Apple Music, Spotify), having “important” and “rare” and “valuable” things like exclusive new albums from music’s biggest stars are the ultimate edge. While streaming was meant to make music more accessible and convenient, it’s now creating a series of walled gardens — beautiful houses for rare and important art. Let’s check in on how that’s affecting consumers and the industry at large.
Kaitlyn Tiffany: This time last year, you and Jamieson (our dear friend, former co-blogger, long-time Canadian, and Kim K stan) talked about how streaming services like Apple Music, Tidal, and Spotify have made the music industry even more unequal — they solidify the 1 percent status of artists like Drake, Taylor Swift, Adele, etc., and make it even harder for indie bands to make a living off of releasing music. This year, I want to talk about something else streaming services have spent the year doing: exclusive releases. They’ve been solidified as standard practice, and this seems like the way things are going to be for a while. Do you feel like it’s a good solution?
Micah Singleton: It’s not a good solution, but it’s the best solution streaming services have come up with so far. Streaming music is a costly business — companies pay millions upfront for the rights to music and then give around 70 percent of that $10 a month you pay them back to the rights holders. That means none of these services — not even Spotify, with its 100 million users — are actually profitable. Apple Music, Tidal, and (to a lesser extent) Amazon Music all have the same goals when it comes to paying for exclusives: to drive subscriptions. But for regular people, exclusives can be a huge inconvenience.
it’s the best solution streaming services have come up with so far
Kaitlyn: We can all pretty much agree that exclusives are a pain in the butt for consumers. That’s barely even a conversation anymore — obviously it’s not convenient for me to have to pay for Tidal in order to hear the new Rihanna or Kanye album the day it comes out, and then also subscribe to Apple Music to hear the new Drake album the day it comes out, and then also subscribe to Spotify because it’s my personal preference for basically everything else (playlists, usability of the app, social functions, force of habit). These albums all become paid downloads (or in Coloring Book’s case — free!), and pirating still isn’t that hard, especially because someone finally taught me how to torrent! So it’s not that I get cut off of from the music forever, just that it’s a serious imposition on my time or wallet if I want to be part of the first morning of a new album hitting the world.