Synthesis Research on the Music Industry

The economic principle I researched was “because of scarcity, people choose.” My overall research question was “How does spotify change the way we consume music?” Overall, I found that consuming and distributing music is now easier than ever with new streaming services.

First of all, a new musical renaissance has come out from music streaming. Steams have been steadily increasing as much as 42.6% in one year. However, a corresponding drop in physical musical sales has also been seen. So, what does this mean? More people are moving towards steaming as well as some people are changing medium to streaming. It makes sense: you can sample music to see if you like it and when you find what you really like you can buy it somewhere else.

 Secondly, the music industry itself has some beef with music streaming. Apparently, there have been some rumors about certain artists signing direct deals with Spotify. What this means if it is true, is that music labels will become obsolete in the coming years. Also this can lead to platforms preferring certain artists over others. This isn’t the only problem the music industry has with these new services. Some platforms, like Spotify, have adopted a censorship policy of sorts. This caused some songs to be removed or blacklisted from the recommendations.